


Go East [+Podfic]

by xinasvoice



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Howl no Ugoku Shiro | Howl's Moving Castle, Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Characters of color, Crossover, Finding Acceptance, M/M, Melanesian/Polynesian inspired character, Misc Tags:, PG13 version of the epilogue available, Rating Info:, Remus as Sophie, Sirius as Howl, Themes:, Tonks as Markl, Trans Character, WARNINGS:, Worldbuilding, a novel-length adventure story that loosely follows the plot of Howl's Moving Castle, but mostly they are themselves, but there are surprises, chosen family, contact me if you need it, duty vs free will, epilogue is explicit, featuring:, magical au, mild descriptions of internal organs and gore, rated PG until the epilogue, the role of secrets, transphobic villian, weird crossovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-02 21:27:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 84,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12734625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xinasvoice/pseuds/xinasvoice
Summary: Remus has been running for a long time. Eventually, he runs into a strange castle built by a wizard and his young apprentice. The longer he stays, the more secrets he uncovers...and the less he wants to leave.This is a novel-length adventure story that loosely follows the plot of Howl's Moving Castle. It does not require knowledge of the HMC book or movie to enjoy it.





	1. In Which Remus Finds a Couch, Brews a Potion, and Reads a Rather Interesting Book

**Author's Note:**

> Podfic duration: 8 hr 11 min  
> (Note: The sound quality varies because of different setups/mics used. Thanks for your forgiveness!)  
> ~ [.m4a audio file Part 1](https://soundcloud.com/user-824292289/go-east-part-1-of-2) (461.4MB) ~ [.m4a audio file Part 2](https://soundcloud.com/user-824292289/go-east-part-2-of-2) (487.9MB) ~ [ .m4b audiobook file](https://www.dropbox.com/s/c2f52xxdrzxyyqm/01%20Go%20East.m4b?dl=0) (245.6MB) ~ [Soundtrack](https://8tracks.com/xinasvoice/go-east) ~
> 
> Ending music is Howl's Moving Castle (Theme) by Joe Hisaishi [Buy it on iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/opening-song-merry-go-round-of-life/883513360?i=883513433)
> 
> [Follow me on Tumblr](xinasvoice.tumblr.com)

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/158228914@N03/45417705635/in/dateposted-public/)

“I’ve become skeptical of the unwritten rule that just because a boy and girl appear in the same feature, a romance must ensue. Rather, I want to portray a slightly different relationship, one where the two mutually inspire each other to live - if I’m able to, then perhaps I’ll be closer to portraying a true expression of love.” - Hayao Miyazaki

 

**Day One**

Remus’ heart stuttered with hope as a large, oddly shaped building loomed out of the fog. He spent a few limping strides considering its unlikely architecture. It was alarmingly top heavy, with strange jutting rooms each constructed of different materials. All the windows he could see were dark except for one tiny circle many feet above his head. It didn’t look like a particularly friendly place, but on a day like today, “friendly” was a relative term. He huddled in the shelter of the doorway for a moment to catch his breath and then knocked.

The baying of the dogs was growing louder. A brown hound bounded into view, barking triumphantly. It was shortly joined by three more. Remus tried to shrink into invisibility in the doorway as more than a dozen armed men and women materialized out of the fog. They stopped a few yards away and eyed the building warily.

“Here now, you come with us,” called a woman whose arms had the solidity and girth of tree trunks. Her reassuring words failed to balance out the menacing way she gripped her long kitchen knife. “Hiding in Wizard Howl’s castle won’t do you any good, wolf. He’ll eat your heart, you know. Us on the other hand...” She grinned with unrepentant viciousness. “We’ll leave your body in one piece. Generous, that.”

He pounded on the door behind him again, wizard or no, keeping his eyes on the woman. “Hey, open up!”

“What do you want?” Remus turned enough to see that a small window had opened in the door where none had been before. Through the opening he could see two squinting eyes. The window was only at his chest height, and the voice sounded young. Apparently this wizard had a child. Or was a child.

“I-I’m just a traveler. But I need help, please let me in!”

“No way!” The bright green eyes darted to the waiting townsfolk. “You’re a criminal or something!”

“I am not a criminal! I won’t hurt you, I just want to rest for a few hours. Please!”

“Oh yeah? Then why are they after you?”

He sighed and sagged in the doorway. His twisted ankle and other moon-wrenched joints were starting to stiffen up again, and he wasn’t sure he could run much further. “Because...I don’t know…because I’m not like them.”

The girl did not answer, and the little window shut with cruel finality. He slid down the frame of the door until he sat on the stoop.

It had been a particularly bad full moon. He had scouted out a deserted forest to the north of Marsh Folding, only to discover near sunset that the village would be holding a spring celebration there after nightfall. In desperation, he had barricaded himself in the wine cellar of a nearby inn. The wolf had been furious about the unusual restriction. Remus had awoken with many bites and scratches, in addition to the twisted ankle. The mad howling had given away his condition to the innkeeper and her patrons, who were the opposite of sympathetic. He had been run out of towns before, but rarely with such persistence and enthusiasm. It probably had something to do with destroying every bottle of wine in the cellar.

His pursuers stirred restlessly now that the window had closed. The innkeeper narrowed her eyes at him and spat demonstrably on the ground. He wondered how long the threat of the wizard’s house would keep them at bay. It had been an awful lot of wine.

The door opened, and he looked up in surprise at the heart-shaped face of a young girl with bizarrely pink hair that was tucked up in a messy bun. She wore a plain brown tunic and underskirt.

“You can come in, but you should know I’m the wizard’s apprentice. If you do anything weird I’ll curse you!”

“No need,” he mumbled. He scrambled to his feet and edged inside before she could change her mind.

“Ugh.” She recoiled backwards from his smell. “Are you drunk?”

“No. Someone threw a bottle at me.” That was technically true, but the bottles the innkeeper had thrown had been empty. It was the wolf that had broken all of the full ones. By the time he was human again, the smell of wine had sunk deep into his skin and hair. At least he had been able to hide his clothes from the wolf by tucking them in the rafters, so they had been spared.

He followed the girl up a short flight of stairs immediately in front of the door to a large living area. Compared to the odd architecture of the exterior of the building, the inside was refreshingly normal. It was also the messiest room he had ever seen. In the left corner of the room was a cast iron stove and cupboards, both of which were piled high with books, dishes, papers, and scraps of food. He could intuit the presence of a sink in the tiled counter under a small window, but this was a leap of faith considering no portion of it could be seen underneath the looming tower of dishes and pans.

There was some order on the opposite side of the room, where several cauldrons bubbled over magically contained fires, but the shelves and worktable surrounding them were overflowing with bottles, spilled potions, books, and scraps of parchment.

There was only one bare surface, and it was the only one Remus cared about. Opposite the front door was a small, toasty fireplace. On either side of it were a two slightly lopsided armchairs—both covered in piles of clothes and oddments—and a very soft looking couch, with nothing on it whatsoever. The worn purple brocade beckoned him closer, and mere moments after he entered the room the couch was completely covered in exhausted werewolf.

“Oh yes, just make yourself at home why don’t you,” the girl said, rolling her eyes.

“So you live here with a wizard, do you? Where is he?” he asked, arranging the cushions so that his ankle was elevated.

“He’ll be back soon...” the girl was saying something else, but Remus had already leaned back into the divine embrace of the couch and fallen asleep.

+++

He awoke some hours later to a sharp knocking sound. He pulled himself into a sitting position and peered over the back of the couch at the door just as the girl came hurtling down a staircase with all the stampeding glory that only children can manage. She ran to a window to the left of the door and peered out. He was surprised to see tall, ornate buildings where he would have expected nothing but the dreary fog and gray hills of the Waste. Apparently she couldn’t see who as at the door after all, because she ran over to the window to the right of the door and looked out it as well. Through this window, he could see blue sky.

“The fisherman’s daughter again...” she mumbled. She caught him watching her curiously over the couch and narrowed her eyes. “I’ll just go get the wizard then. You stay right there.”

She ran back up the stairs, punching herself in the stomach with the banister knob in the process. A few moments later, a winkled old man in a long purple overrobe and a green brocaded hat came down the stairs with surprising agility considering he was so stooped with age. Remus sat up more fully on the couch, thinking he had better introduce himself, but the wizard didn’t spare him a glance. He went straight across the room and down the other staircase to the entrance, where he turned a small knob that was mounted to the right of the door. It was a round disk with four colored dots: green, yellow, red, and black. The wizard turned the knob so the yellow dot was at the top and opened the door.

Remus was shocked to see not the foggy moors of the Waste, but sunlit cobblestones. Even stranger, on the breeze that drifted in he could smell people, horses, and the sea. In the doorway was a young redheaded girl in a yellow kerchief, blue dress, and tidy white apron.

“Hello Sylvia!” the old man croaked. “What a pretty dress! You’re here for the usual spell then?”

“Yes, Wizard Jenkins!” Sylvia said. “Please, please, can I watch this time?”

“All right...just this once. But you have to stand back, and don’t touch anything!”

“Yes, sir!” The wizard climbed back up the entry stairs, and the girl followed him and hovered near the edge of the workspace. The wizard poked cautiously at the overstuffed shelves, extracting a few bottles and packets from underneath books and small mountains of loose papers. He brought them over to the bubbling cauldrons and slowly added powders and drops of liquid to one of them. Then he turned back around to embark on a lengthy quest for what turned out to be a clean sheet of parchment. He laid it flat on his palm and ladled some of the potion onto it. The liquid turned into dry powder as soon as it touched the parchment. He awkwardly curled the paper into a packet and gave it to the girl. “Here you go. This will keep your father’s boat safe and give him good luck fishing. It’s seven coppers.”

As the girl fumbled in her pockets, Remus pulled his reluctant body off the couch. He hadn’t slept nearly long enough. A surreptitious exploration confirmed that most of his injuries were still hidden under his long sleeves and trousers, but his ankle was swollen and throbbing. That didn’t stop him from being curious about the sunny cobblestone street that had apparently replaced the lackluster vegetation of the Waste. He hobbled down to the door and opened it.

The cobblestone street was right where he was not sure if he should expect it. He stepped out into the sunlight, which was warmer than it should have been for the season. Bordering the cobblestones were rows of cheery yellow buildings with red roofs and blue shutters. There were people on the street with baskets and horse-drawn carts. Past it all was the sparkle of a large harbor, thick with fishing boats.

Turning back, he saw the strange top-heavy building he had entered early that morning had been replaced by a neat yellow house similar to the ones on either side of it. Elegantly scrawled above the simple blue door were the words, “The Great Wizard Jenkins.”

“Some sort of transportation spell,” he mused aloud. He stretched his sore muscles in the welcome sunlight. It was tempting to stay out here and bask, but the soft purple couch in the wizard’s house still held too strong an appeal.

The redheaded girl came out through the door just as Remus was about to go in.

“Hello!” she said. “Are you a wizard too?”

“No, I’m just Wizard Jenkins’ itinerant monster,” he said dryly and shut the door behind him.

Inside, the wizard was muttering and poking at the piles of debris on the workbench. Remus wondered how the girl with pink hair had explained his presence to the wizard. Perhaps she had not explained at all, and he would soon be told to leave. He knew something about wizards and was not eager to cause offense. But he couldn’t leave without his pack, which was still on the couch. He hovered awkwardly at the bottom of the stairs out of the wizard’s line of sight, trying to decide how to approach the situation.

There was another knock at the door. Without thinking, he turned to open it.

“Stop!” Jenkins said, peering out the window. He glared down at Remus, not at all welcoming but at least not surprised to see him. “Just stay there.”

Jenkins hustled up the stairs and out of sight. Remus shifted his weight away from his swollen ankle and wondered if the wizard would think him disobedient if he returned to the couch. He had just decided it was worth the risk when a new person came down the stairs. It was a very short, very rotund middle aged man in a light blue robe with a brown hemline that trailed behind him on the floor. He wore a pointed green hat just as Jenkins had.

“Good morning, sir.” Remus bowed sightly, determined to make a good first impression on at least one of the apparently multiple wizards living in this house. “I hope I have not caught you off guard—”

“Not now!” The man cut him off squeakily and pushed past him to twirl the knob with the colored dots and open the door.

This time the view out the door was of cracked red bricks and a flurry of automobiles spewing smoke. The street was surrounded by crimson buildings with a multitude of gilded domes and spires.

“Wizard Pendragon, I presume,” said a man in a pressed red and gold uniform. “I have a letter for you from the Kingsbury Quartermaster.”

The wizard accepted the letter and bowed slightly before closing the door. He brushed past Remus, muttering distractedly as he opened and read the letter. “Spidertail...expensive...”

“If I could introduce myself,” Remus started, but the wizard did not seem to notice him at all. He continued up the stairs to the second story, leaving Remus still standing awkwardly by the door.

Perhaps the purple couch was not worth the strangeness of this house. But he was still exhausted and stinking of wine, and he would soon be too hungry to continue ignoring it. The wolf needed to hunt on the full moons, and there had been precious little wildlife in the wine cellar.

Shrugging, he turned back to the door and examined the knob next to it more closely. It was about the size of his palm and neatly painted with four colored dots, which seemed to correspond to different locations the door could open onto. The knob was currently turned so the top dot was red. He opened the door and peered out onto the busy street the uniformed official had knocked from. Leaning out the doorway, he could look up and see a sign with “Wizard Pendragon” written on it in distinguished gold letters.

“Quite ingenious...” he mused. The house seemed to be some sort of wizarding partnership or collective. Each wizard had their own storefront in their own town. This presumably reduced competition, while sharing an interior must save on costs. The innkeeper from the Waste had mentioned a wizard named Howl, and four dots on the door implied four wizards. Yellow for Jenkins’ shop at the fishing town, red for Pendragon in the city, green for Howl in the Waste, and...

Daringly, he spun the knob next to the door until the fourth dot, the black one, was pointed up. He glanced behind him to make sure he was still alone and opened the door. Wind rushed past at an incredible speed, threatening to suck him out the doorway. He leaned back in alarm, gasping as the door swung open to reveal no street, no land at all, just air and the emptiness of turbulent skies. In the distance he could see huge airships circling each other ponderously. Flashes of light and trails of smoke were accompanied by distant booming explosions.

The door slammed shut abruptly and the girl with pink hair glared up at him.

“Nosy, aren’t you? You just go begging to come into strangers’ houses, taking over their couches, and poking around! Leave the door alone.” She huffed up the stairs and flopped face first onto the purple couch.

He limped after her around piles of crumpled blankets and books. Although she was smaller than him, she had somehow managed to take up the entire couch and dangle her feet over the armrest with a gangliness that foreshadowed teenagerhood. She lay on her stomach with her hand smashing her cheek and read the letter Pendragon had received.

“My name is Remus,” he said, acting on the hunch that this particular child was unlikely to be impressed by a fancy introduction.

“I’m Tonks.” She did not look up.

“Sorry about the door. I was just curious. Thanks for letting me in earlier.”

“Sure, I guess.”

“I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself to the wizards. I hope they’re not upset that you let me in?”

She peered up at him from under a raised eyebrow without moving her head. “No. They don’t care.”

“Oh. That’s good.” He peered down at the letter, trying to read it upside down. Tonks raised her other eyebrow, somehow managing to look down her nose at him from several feet below. He cleared his throat. “Um…can I use your bathroom?”

“Upstairs.”

He climbed the creaking staircase to the second floor and soon found that this one-word direction had not been adequate. The second floor was a simple, windowless landing with four identical doors leading off of it. Behind the first door he tried was a bedroom. The bed stood next to a window that looked out onto a sparkling lake bordered by steep mountain slopes. In this room, too, there were stacks of dishes, and so much dust on the knickknacks and books on the shelves lining walls of the room that he could only suppose no one had _ever_ throughly cleaned. If the brown skirt hanging off the edge of the bed was any indication, this was Tonks’ room.

The second door was locked. Perhaps this was where Jenkins and Pendragon were lurking.

The third door led to the bathroom, which was just as horrifically dirty as he had feared it would be. There was hardly a speck of white porcelain to be seen, and the tub was striped with a brownish rainbow of spilled soaps and beauty potions. Still, he had dealt with worse before, and he managed to get the worst of the wine smell off his skin by wiping down at the sink. He would have dearly loved a bath—plumbing, no matter how dirty, was a rare luxury—but he was worried the wizards would object to him making himself that much at home.

Biological errand run, he returned to the hallway to open the fourth door as well, just for completion’s sake. It was a closet. In stark contrast to the rest of the house, there were only a few things in it: a broom, a large mirror, a set of light blue robes identical to the ones Pendragon had worn, a purple robe as Jenkins had worn, and a single green brocade hat.

He frowned at the hat and stood very still, listening to the house. The wind of the Waste whistled by outside. This confirmed Remus’ suspicion that the Waste was where the house was actually located, as opposed to in one of the towns he had seen, or—albeit improbably—in the air behind the door with the black dot. With his eyes closed he could just barely hear Tonks shifting on the couch downstairs. He could even hear the remains of water in the pipes from his bathroom experience. And he could smell…there was a faint odor to the robes in front of him, and it was the same one he had slept amongst on the purple couch. It was the same scent that had brushed past him several times this morning…

+++

“You made it all up!” Remus waved the green hat at Tonks. “There are no wizards at all, it is just you! You’re disguising yourself somehow.”

She jerked upright on the couch indignantly. “There is too a wizard! And I haven’t made anything up, I haven’t told you a thing so how could I have! You’re just nosing around and deciding on things!”

“And why should I believe there are any wizards here at all and that you’re not just a child here on your own?” Although, as he said it he realized how ridiculous the idea was, a child alone in a house that supported at least two businesses, with a transportation spell on the door so complex he had never seen the like of it in many years of traveling.

“I’m not a child, I’m twelve, and I’m _not_ here on my own!” Her voice rose and cracked noticeably at the end of the sentence. His gut spun with guilt when he saw her eyes filling with tears. “Sirius lives with me and he’s coming back! He’s c-coming back really soon. You’ll see!” She curled up on the couch, clenching her arms around her legs and pressing her face into her knees.

“Look, I’m sorry...” He knelt down in front of her. He didn’t know much about children, but he did know about being alone. “You live with Sirius? Who is he?”

“I _told_ you, he’s the wizard! He-he’s fighting in the war,” she said around poorly hidden tears. “He’ll be back soon. Any day—”

His heart sank. This wouldn’t be the first child he had seen abandoned by the ravages of war. He had not been in Ingary long, but he had been here long enough to know that the war was bloody and nowhere near a peaceful conclusion.

“How long have you been alone here?”

“Three weeks, but he said he would only be gone for two! And the stock potions are running out and now the army wants me to make Strengthening potions and I’ve never done it before—I don’t even have enough ingredients! I need spidertail, but Sirius is the one that buys things.” She choked on a sob and scrubbed at her face with the hem of her skirt.

Remus sighed. He probably shouldn’t get mixed up in this, but he couldn’t make himself ignore her need. “Do you want some help?”

She huffed into the fabric of her skirt. “You—you want to help me? You know how to make potions?”

“Well, no. But I’m good at new things.”

“That...that doesn’t make any sense.” She lowered her skirt. Her cheeks were blotchy and she was frowning at him suspiciously. “You can’t be good at something unless you know how to do it.”

He shrugged and smiled at her in what he hoped was an encouraging way. “Potions are like cooking right? You have a recipe?” She nodded. “So how hard can it be?”

+++

It was much more difficult than a cooking recipe. There were dozens of steps which all had to be completed with precise timing, and some of it was written in another language entirely. But Tonks brushed that complication aside.

“That’s just latagun,” she said. “It’s a wizard language. I can read it. Mostly, anyways.”

Remus took notes with a scavenged piece of parchment and quill, relying heavily on Tonk’s translation of the messy handwriting and the foreign language. Just reading through the recipe took over an hour—during which he had to fight the heavy eyelids brought on by a sleepless night of the wolf bashing his body around in the wine cellar—but when they were done he had a fair idea of how the potion should go, and he was able to beg off Tonks’ insistence that they go buy ingredients _right now_ on account of his twisted ankle. Falling asleep over the worktable twice probably helped persuade her too.

For whatever reason, he was allowed to sleep for a full five hours before being woken by Tonks wearing the Pendragon disguise.

“How does that work anyways?” he wondered aloud. “I’ve never seen such an effective deception spell. Usually they look sort of blurry around the edges.”

She pulled the green hat down low over Pendragon’s eyes, hesitating.

“Sirius is a really good wizard.” That was all she would say on the matter. It was strange to hear her child’s voice coming from Pendragon’s mustachioed mouth, and he recognized in retrospect how she had tried to change her voice when in disguise.

After a quick meal of stale bread and cheese, they were on their way. The herbal supply was quite close when Tonks turned the door to the red dot and led them out into the city of Kingsbury. She seemed confident of the way, but she peered around corners with more wariness than he thought the neighborhood deserved. Perhaps she was from a small town, or Sirius did not let her go out much. He was grateful for her cautious pace, as made it possible for him to keep up, even limping as he was. A short while later, Tonks had the spidertail tucked in Pendragon’s robes and they began the walk back.

“Wait,” he gestured to a produce stand. “Should we get some food too?”

He hadn’t seen any food in the house other than what they had finished before leaving, and he was not inclined to spend an evening brewing a complicated potion without some hope of dinner.

“Oh. No, there’s food at home,” she said.

“What food?” He raised his eyebrows at her nervously shuffling boots.

“Potatoes.”

“Anything else?”

“No, but-”

“Then let’s get something. Potatoes aren’t enough for a whole meal.” And if they dated back to before Sirius had left, as he suspected the cheese and bread had, they wouldn’t make even part of a meal. Tonks fingered her coin pouch hesitantly and Remus sighed. He had a little money saved up from odd jobs in Marsh Folding. It wasn’t much, but it would serve for a few meals for a war orphan. “I’ll pay. It’s only polite, since you have been so hospitable.”

Tonks brightened and he picked out some vegetables. He tried to choose ones that would last, seeing as the house didn’t seem to have an icebox.

“I hate cauliflower,” Tonks declared imperiously in Pendragon’s squeaky voice.

“He who pays, picks.” But he also got a few of the huge spring strawberries he saw her hovering around.

She watched him fumble with the irritatingly similar coins as he paid the produce seller. “You’re not from around here are you?”

“No. I was only in Marsh Folding about a week. And I’ve been traveling a long time.”

“Hmm,” she said. He put the vegetables into his pack and held the handkerchief full of strawberries out to her. She reached short, perhaps because Pendragon’s arms were smaller than her own. The fruit dropped to the cobblestones. He brushed off her embarrassment, and they ate them on the way home instead of after dinner as he had planned.

+++

It only took a few minutes of slogging through the potion recipe for him to realize that his main role was to be a spotter to Tonks’ extraordinary clumsiness. He had never seen anyone knock over things over as often as she did. By the time they were done, several hours later, the floor was littered with shards of glass, puddles of liquid, and drifts of various powdered ingredients. But there was also a decanter of what was hopefully Strengthening potion.

“We have to try it.” Tonks scratched her head, leaving a trail of blue powder in her hair, which had returned to its previous pink color now that she had removed the Pendragon disguise. “If it doesn’t work, or if it hurts someone, we’ll get punished. Sometimes they even kill people for faulty potion brewing.”

She poured a small splash into a miraculously clean glass. Remus took it and drank it before there could be a discussion about which one of them would try it. After a long night as a hyperviolent wolf in a small cellar, a morning running for his life on a twisted ankle, an afternoon trotting around town on that same ankle, and an evening of complicated potion brewing, a Strengthening potion sounded wonderful. And if there were ill effects...he was too tired to care anymore.

It was bitter enough to make him cough. He thought uneasily about how often they had lost track of the recipe and counted the stirring strokes wrong, or allowed clouds of extra ingredients to drift into the cauldron. Tonks watched him with wide, concerned eyes, perhaps thinking the same thing.

“I don’t feel anything. My ankle still hurts,” he said, rotating it experimentally.

“It’s not a Healing potion. It’s supposed to make you stronger. Try lifting something.”

He picked up the stool he had been sitting on. It was as light as a piece of paper. She smiled with relief as he set it back down and looked around for something heavier. The couch would do. It was large, with thick carvings in dark wood. He definitely would not have been able to lift it more than a few inches off the ground normally, especially on the day after the full moon. With the potion at work, he lifted it as high as his waist with little effort.

“It’s working!” Tonks laughed and jumped onto the couch as he held it in midair. Her weight hardly made a difference. He set the couch down carefully.

“I guess it is. How long does it last?”

She leaned over the back of the couch, arms dangling. “Maybe a couple hours. You didn’t drink much.”

“Then I’ll make dinner,” he said, eyeing the haphazard pile of dirty pots and dishes on the little cast iron stove. It obviously had not been used in some time. The Strengthening potion didn’t help with his aching joints or the raw scratches that brushed against the inside of his clothing, but it was having some sort of effect. He felt like he could do things without the pain bothering him as much. It was an unusual and welcome feeling. He wondered how long the potion in the bottle would be fresh for, and if there would be any extra after the army had their share.

The sink and counter were stacked so high with dishes that he had to put the dirty pots from the stove on the floor and wash the one he wanted to use in the bathroom sink upstairs. He didn’t even try to clear enough space on the counter for preparing the vegetables and used a corner of the workbench instead. The wizard must have been the one to do the dishes in the house, and Tonks obviously had not felt motivated to pick up the task since he had left. Remus couldn’t really blame her and shuffled the mess around without comment.

He felt an unexpected surge of anger at the wizard who had gone off to war, leaving this child here alone. He didn’t know how firm draft enforcement was in this country, but it seemed to him that someone as powerful as a wizard should have been able to come up with a better solution than abandoning his young apprentice and leaving her in charge of his wizarding businesses.

Tonks slumped on the stool next to him and watched him cutting up the vegetables.

“What happened to your hands?” She pointed to the cuts and bruises made by the wolf’s paws scrabbling against the door of the wine cellar the night before.

“I had a job pruning barberry bushes a few days ago.” The lie came easily. His knife continued to chop rhythmically through a bunch of carrots without pause.

“Hmm.” She frowned at his fingers. “There aren’t barberry bushes around Marsh Folding. It’s too cold for them there.”

“Ah. I don’t speak your language well. I must have the name wrong.” He slid the sliced carrots into the pan and unwrapped the broad leaves surrounding the cauliflower.

“I think you’re lying,” she pressed. “I think those people beat you up because you’re a criminal, so you don’t want to talk about it.”

He avoided her gaze, searching for the right angle to make the first cut into the dense head of cauliflower. “I’m not a criminal. You have the last part right though. I don’t want to talk about it.”

She sighed and dropped her head down onto her arms on the table, face still turned towards him. “I hate secrets.”

“Me too.” Small florets of cauliflower rained down onto the worktable as he carved them off the central stem. “But sometimes people need secrets to be safe.”

“You sound like Sirius,” she grumbled.

He scooped the cauliflower into the pan and looked down at her, concerned. The lamplight cast shadows over her face and made her pink hair seem almost orange. “Does Sirius make you keep secrets?”

“Yeah. Not so much now though.”

“Since he’s been gone?”

“No, since we came here.”

“Where were you before?”

She didn’t answer and the silence stretched between them. He looked around the strange little house. He thought about a wizard and his young female apprentice living out here in the Waste, pretending to be several wizards at once. He thought about the townsfolks’ aversion to the house, even when eager to gut a werewolf. Oh yes...this place reeked of secrets.

+++

“Tonks, can you make Healing potions?” Remus asked as they were finishing dinner.

“Yeah, we make that all the time. Do you want some? To make your ankle and your hands better?”

“Do you have some ready?” He sat up straight on his stool, every abused muscle and joint crying out for immediate relief if it could be had.

She dragged her stool over to the shelves behind the perpetually bubbling cauldrons and stood on it to reach a tall, thin bottle on the top shelf. Inside was a few finger width’s of thick amber potion.

Healing potions were expensive, much more so than he could afford from the odd jobs he was able to get while traveling. He had only used one once, when the wolf had gotten its front leg caught in a bear trap. He never remembered the full moons with much clarity, but the searing pain of the closing trap—second only to the pain of the transformation itself—was vivid in his human mind. The enraged wolf had somehow managed to jerk free, but at great cost. Remus had awoken the next morning to see the white edges of bone sticking out through the jagged skin of his arm. In a fog induced by blood loss, he had to sold everything he owned to afford the potion. He went hungry for a few weeks after that, but the immediate relief from pain and the greatly accelerated healing process had made it worthwhile.

So he found himself wide-eyed with disbelief when Tonks poured him a dose and handed him the glass with no mention of payment. He gratefully drank it all, his anxious heart soothed by the half-remembered honeylike taste. The potion spread with immediate warmth throughout his body. He closed his eyes, holding back sudden tears of relief. He had become accustomed, over the years, to blocking out the bulk of the pain that monthly transformations caused him. The repetition of moon after moon led to injuries that never fully healed, or at least never completely stopped hurting, and the absence of that pain was so stark that it caught at his breath. After some adjustment, he opened his eyes to see Tonks watching the cuts on his hands slowly but visibly knitting back together.

“Thank you. I feel so much better. That must be a very strong potion.”

“Yeah. Sirius made it. He’s better than me at potions.”

“What about the rest? Can I have it?” There was still at least one more dose in the bottle. Maybe two if he didn’t take the whole dose. Two months without pain.

Tonks pulled the bottle closer to her. He wasn’t surprised. She was probably hoping to sell it. He wondered how much the potion had cost to make. How much of her livelihood she had just given away?

“I could buy it,” he offered, seeing her hesitation. “I don’t know what you usually charge, but I could give you enough to cover the cost of the ingredients at least...”

“No, it’s just...” She pulled the bottle all the way into her lap and wrapped her arms around it protectively. “Sirius will be back soon, and he’s fighting. He might come back hurt. He might need it.”

Remus’ heart sank. He had put things together by now and had gathered that Sirius must be fighting in the battle he had glimpsed through the door with the black dot. People didn’t come back from battles like that. They just died. But he didn’t have the heart to say so to her.

“I’m sorry, you’re right. Someone else might need it. And it was very generous of you to give me any. I know that potion is usually very expensive.”

“That’s all right,” she said. “Sirius can make more once he comes back.”

“Or you can learn to make it yourself. You did the Strengthening potion. I didn’t even help much. You have a good trade set up for you here. I think you’ll get the hang of it soon. Once you get a little older you can set up shop as yourself instead of using those disguises. Enchantress Tonks.”

“I guess.” She put the potion bottle down and slumped over the table. She didn’t seem much cheered by his rosy painting of her future.

He picked up his plate and held out his hand for hers. “Here, I’ll wash it. You’ll have something clean for breakfast.” But she didn’t seem to be listening.

“I don’t care what Sirius says,” she said with sudden determination. “I don’t like secrets.”

“Oh?” He raised his eyebrows and set his plate back down. She sat up tall on the stool, lifting her chin with regal poise.

“I don’t use disguises to be Wizard Pendragon and Wizard Jenkins. I don’t need to. I’m a metamorphmagus. I can change how I look.”

“Oh. I see.” He had heard of metamorphs before, although he had never met one. He had come across mention of them while trying to research cures for his own transfigurative condition. He had lost interest when he learned that the ability was inborn and thus of no use to him. “Well,” he said, unsure what do do with this new information. “That explains a lot. Like your hair.”

“Yeah...I like pink. And hair is easy. See, look.” Her face took on an expression of concentration and her hair turned gradually from pink to dark glossy brown.

“Wow. Brown looks good on you,” he said, impressed with how easily she could change her appearance. The more natural color suited her, and he wondered if that was her real hair color, or if she even had a “real” hair color.

“I like pink,” she repeated, shrugging, as the color brightened back to rosy pink. She twirled one of the strands that had come loose from her bun around her finger. “I don’t like lying. I just want to be myself.”

“I think most people do.” He certainly did. He rarely felt like he was completely himself, with the curse of the wolf always looming over him.

“Some people think it’s weird that I can look like other people. They get scared, so Sirius tells me to keep it a secret.” She fiddled with her fork. He winced as she dug the tines into the workbench, although the once-fine wood was already pitted and stained from years of potion brewing.

“I suppose he was trying to protect you.”

“Yeah, he is.” She glanced up at him. “Are you scared of me? You don’t seem scared.”

“Not really. It takes a lot to scare me.” He smiled and leaned over the table to take her plate. “Sorry.”

She smiled back shyly. “What about when I said I’d curse you? Were you scared then?”

“Sure. I don’t like curses. If you want to make it even scarier you should say what kind of curse. Something really unpleasant.”

She made a mock angry face, waving the fork threateningly at him. “You better look out, or I’ll give you green boils all over your legs!”

“Ugh, that sounds awful! Can you actually do that?”

“No,” she said, putting the fork down on the table. He casually took it away before it could do any more harm, adding it to the stack of plates. “Not with a curse anyways. I probably could with a potion. We have a whole book of nasty skin potions...” she looked around the chaotic room hopefully, “...somewhere.”

“I guess the wizard is the one that usually cleans up around here, huh?”

“No, Sirius doesn’t know much about cleaning either.”

“Ah. Well, that explains a lot too.” He took the plates upstairs to the bathroom sink. She wandered in after him and perched on the edge of the stained porcelain tub, which made him fear for the cleanliness of her skirt.

“Remus?” she said once the tiny bathroom sink was full of dishes and soapy water. “Will you stay here for a while? Just until Sirius comes back?”

He sighed and scrubbed at the dishes. He had half expected something like this. He had not expected himself to be so tempted by the idea. 

Tonks was more fortunate than she knew. She had a roof over her head and access to a decent—possibly even lucrative—livelihood. Those were things he had rarely had. He could imagine how it might go. He would stay “until Sirius came back” which would be several months at the very least, assuming the wizard survived at all. She would grieve the loss of her mentor, but Remus was no stranger to pain, physical or emotional. He could encourage her to continue her learning, with the aid of the many books here. He could even set up his own shop and work as a tailor as he had often done. He could learn to brew himself Healing potions. He could live without pain. He could have a good life.

And once a month he would go rabid in some forest or field and pray that the wolf wasn’t smart enough to follow the trail of his own human scent back to the house, where Tonks would be sleeping. It wouldn’t be the first time. He had tried to settle down before. It had always ended in disaster, and—when he was much younger and less aware of the risks—the wolf had hurt people. Innocent, kind people who had dared to get to know him or simply allowed him to spend a few nights in their home.

He leaned his hands on the edges of the sink and let his head hang. It just wouldn’t work. It was too dangerous. He could not let his curse claim another. He had promised himself years ago.

“I can’t. I’m sorry.” He avoiding her hopeful gaze in the mirror over the sink.

“Just for a little while! A few days—”

“Not even for a few days. I have to keep moving. I can’t stay here.”

She bit her lip and hung her head, eyes barely obscured by her short fringe.

“I’m sorry, Tonks. I’m sure you don’t like being here alone. I wish I could stay, but I just...can’t.”

She turned away from him, towards the tiny window over the toilet that looked out onto the Waste. “You should at least stay tonight. See, it’s dark and raining too.”

He sighed. He could indeed hear rain pattering on the window. He usually traveled in all weather, but he didn’t relish a wet night. “All right. I’ll stay—but only until morning.”

Tonks smiled and kicked her feet against the base of the tub.

+++

To his great disappointment, she directed him away from the luxurious purple couch. Instead, she pulled back a curtain to reveal a nook under the stairs. It was piled high with clutter, of course, which she dumped on the floor unceremoniously. A long bench was revealed, complete with pillows and a narrow mattress.

“I used to sleep here before I had a bedroom,” she said, and he wondered if the clutter dated from that era. The thickness of the dust seemed to support that theory.

“I don’t mind the couch...” he started to say.

“No, I sleep there when Sirius is gone. That way I’ll know when he comes home.”

So he settled down into the nook, finding some dusty but still serviceable blankets in a corner. He didn’t bother closing the curtain. Tonks sat on the purple couch, with her knees pulled up to her chest and no apparent inclination to go to sleep anytime soon.

“You know,” he said hesitantly. “He might not come back for a while. I don’t know what he told you, but soldiers usually have to stay with the army once they are drafted, until the war is over. That might be a long time.”

“He’s not a _soldier_ ,” she said incredulously. “Wizards don’t get drafted, they get _summoned_ , just for the battle parts! He always comes back as soon as the battle is over, this is just a longer battle than usual.”

“Oh.” He wondered what that meant for Sirius’ odds of survival. What did wizards do in battles anyways? Did they stand at the back and shoot lightning at the enemy forces? Did they lead offensive charges? He had an urge to turn the knob by the door to the black dot so he could look out and see how the campaign had progressed. But he didn’t want to disturb Tonks any more than he already had, so he let the door be. The nook was surprisingly comfortable, but no amount of settling would bring on tiredness that he had banished with a full afternoon’s sleeping. Tonks drooped down into the embrace of the couch in increments: shoulders, head, eyes, until she was asleep. The fire died slowly as well, leaving the room lit only by the Kingsbury streetlights shining in through one window and shreds of moonlight coming in through the other.

Remus sighed and turned onto his back. If he wasn’t going to be able to sleep, perhaps he should leave tonight after all. He was well familiar with the irregular sleep patterns his monthly habits caused. He usually spent these sleepless nights traveling under the waning moon. It wouldn’t be so hard to leave now. He could slip out without waking Tonks. But that was the coward’s way out, and the sound of the rain on the roof reminded him there would be no moonlight in the Waste to walk by tonight. Tonks had already informed him that the harbor town of Porthaven was due south of the Waste and Kingsbury was southwest. Both in the wrong direction.

The rafters supporting the stairs and landing above him were dusty and thickly trimmed with cobwebs. Irregular shapes were wedged into the tiny spaces between beams and stairs, and he realized incredulously that this was an extension of the clutter pervading the house. There were empty potion bottles, rags, even a few books.

Lacking other diversion, he reached up and pulled down one of the books. Its title was blurred in the faint light, so he crept out of bed in search of a lamp. Remembering one in the far corner of the room, he felt his way in that direction, shuffling so as not to kick anything. He found one where he had remembered it, on the floor. It was next to a staircase he hadn’t explored yet. Curious, he followed the winding stair upward. At the top was a door with a small round window, through which he could see a balcony festooned with levers that were barely visible in the thick, cloudy darkness of the Waste. He shivered and turned away, preferring to remain oblivious to wizardly contraptions.

He brought the lamp back to the nook under the stairs and shut the curtain to prevent waking Tonks with the light. But once he had shone the lamp on the title of the book, he nearly dropped both in shock.

_Man and Wolf: Willing and Unwilling Transformations_

It was a thin volume, but as he leafed through it with his free hand, he could see that many sections did indeed relate to lycanthropy. He read bits and pieces as the pages fluttered through his fingers.

_...the werewolf, however, is unlike these other examples in that it appears alone in the transformative world as one that is obliged to change its form against its will, donning the skin of a vicious wolf and stalking villages with vengeful bloodthirstiness._

_Although this author has been unable to acquire a specimen for either live or post-mortem dissection, one can theorize about the foul humors that must circulate within the lycanthropic individual. If these could be measured at regular monthly intervals, a better understanding of the lunar contaminancy could be found..._

_For example, the studies of Thayakan researcher, Milotiam Aganos, reveal that while werewolves rarely remember their violent escapades once they take on human form, certain types of memories are retained. Pain, whether induced by the researchers or by the animal itself, was frequently recounted after the fact as clearly as if the wolf was still present in the room and given the ability to speak. So it may be that therein lies the hope for controlling these beasts, for what the mind remembers, the mind has some power to control._

_—and again we lament the fact that such creatures as the each-uisge  and werewolf are killed and disposed of so thoroughly, when a more liberated individual would strive to instead preserve these rare specimens for further study._

He finished flipping through the book and let it fall into his lap. He set the lamp down on the bench next to him with shaking hands. His understanding of this language was not fluent, but he could read the text well enough. Throughout many years of traveling, he had formed a habit of poking around bookshops and libraries in search of information about his condition, but it was nearly impossible to find books with actual information. He had read dozens of tales of young children being devoured and thick books documenting techniques for hunting and killing werewolves. He had never seen a book that investigated lycanthropy from a scientific—if morbid—angle as this one seemed to do.

The other books in his nook also seemed interesting, although in a less personal way: _The Animal In Us, Stories from Animagi Around the World_ and _Banned But Beneficial: Potions That Should Never Have Been Restricted._

He ran his fingers over the cover of the first book he had found. It did seem true now that he thought on it, that he could remember pain from his time as a wolf much better than anything else. He remembered the wolf smashing its shoulders against the door of the wine cellar last night. He remembered the sting of glass from wine bottles under its paws. He remembered it gnawing at itself in rabid frustration. He remembered how much it had wanted _out,_ the tantalizing, searing pain of human scent in its nose, driving it to violence with brutal relentlessness.

Being able to remember hadn’t seemed to give him the ability to control his actions. It was tempting to dismiss the idea as the pompous writings of a researcher, and a sadistic one at that. He understood the fear that inspired people to hunt werewolves for a living. He had run into a few hunters in his time, but the idea of “live and post-mortem dissection” made him shiver like hunters never did.

Still, no amount of distaste for methods would distract him from the excitement of having found this book, and the other two might prove useful as well. He wondered how many other helpful books he might find in this odd wizard’s house. Would there be a copy of Milotiam Aganos’ work here? He reflected on the seemingly endless chaos in the house, remembering how many of the piles had been not just dust and dishes but books. Books on the floor, under the couch, stacked haphazardly with bottles of potions on shelves...there had even been a book propping up a broken foot on the clawed bathtub upstairs. There might be something in this house even more beneficial than the possibility of learning to brew Healing potions. There might be information about his condition, of better quality than he would ever have access to again.

There might be a cure.

Like the sun after a week in darkness, this hope was too bright, too painful, to look at directly. So he didn’t. Instead, he stretched his newly healed legs appreciatively, and turned to the beginning of _Man and Wolf_ with every intention of reading it cover to to cover before the night was over.


	2. In Which the Wizard Returns, Dishes Are Broken, and Dust Is Conquered

**Day Two**

 

The oil in the lamp burned low. The flame died, leaving the small house in darkness. Remus slept.

He dreamed that the house was made of creaking planks of wood held together with nails and pitch and rope. It was a ship, not the large sea canoes of his youth, but an enormous Ingarian style vessel. He was tucked securely in a bunk, lulled by the gentle rocking motion of the sea.

Suddenly the door of his cabin slammed open and a dank breeze rippled the curtain of his bunk. It must be one of his shipmates, he thought, drowsily annoyed that they would let the cold air whip through the room without shutting the door.

He heard a strange dragging noise, as if someone was pulling bags of wet canvas across the floorboards. He sat up, crouching his head to avoid bumping the bunk above his. Moving cargo in the middle of the night was really too much. Such things could wait until morning. He reached to pull back the curtain to tell them off but froze in fear when he heard hoarse, wet breathing.

A dim light flared on the other side of the curtain. He heard a soft, mumbling voice. The light shifted and two shadows were thrown against the curtain. One was small and human. The other was impossibly large, too big to have even fit through the cabin door. The silhouette showed too many limbs and a grotesquely hooked face.

In the village where Remus had grown up, certain adults had told stories of evil beasts, things that rose dripping with kelp from the seawater, dragging their rotting bodies through the shadows of the jungle, looking for children that misbehaved. In the dream, he was a small and gullible child again. He shrank into the corner of his bunk, pushed by a heavy and oppressive terror.

They had told stories of werewolves too. They had been dramatic enough to stop him from venturing into the jungle at night, but in the end it hadn’t mattered. And even the most embellished stories had been tame compared to the reality of his life since the night the witch had cursed him.

This was no wolf, though. It didn’t smell right. It smelled of soot, rain, darkness, and the sea. And something else far more familiar than any of these. Salt and iron. Blood.

The mumbling voice continued, words indistinguishable over the rhythmic churning of the sea. He thought it must be the smaller shadow that was speaking. One of his own shipmates must have betrayed them to the beast. He knew his only hope was to stay still and quiet, praying they would assume his bunk empty and move on. Although he was not was usually prone to cowardice, the thing in the room put such a chill in the pit of his stomach that he wanted only to escape notice, even if it meant the rest of the crew was devoured.

The ship lurched suddenly and the creature stumbled, limbs flinging wide. One spindly appendage brushed against the curtain and left behind a ink-black smear that dripped slowly down the fabric. The beast straightened, now directly outside Remus’ bunk. The shadow of the clawed head swiveled slowly to one side. It was so close that the watery chugs of its breath rippled the curtain.

Remus held his own breath. Could the thing smell him? It stood frozen in one place, like a dog that had closed on its quarry and needed only a signal, a twitch of life, to spur it to attack.

Remus found he had his hand sealed tightly over his nose and mouth for fear of breathing, and the edges of his vision began to darken. He was running out of air but did not dare inhale. Better to fall unconscious and have the monster take him for dead.

The darkness crept towards the center of his vision, and just as he thought he might get his wish, the murmuring resumed. The creature turned away from him. The floorboards creaked under its weight as it lumbered out of sight, the smaller shape following it closely.

He felt rather than heard once the thing was truly gone. He collapsed down onto his bunk, shaking and sweating. For the first time in his life, he wished he could summon the wolf whenever he wished. How else could he hope to defend himself against such a creature? But no monster would have stood a chance against a werewolf.

He curled his fingers in the soft blankets and turned his face into the pillow Tonks had given him. Exhaustion warred with the adrenaline rushing through him and his eyelids fluttered closed.

 _Tonks._ His’ eyes flew open, and he sat upright again. The smaller shadow had been Tonks! How had he not realized? Her scent had been innocently intertwined with that of the beast, and he belatedly recognized her soft murmuring voice.

She had led the creature away, apparently oblivious to the danger. He fumbled in his bunk and pulled himself out of the nest of blankets. It was one thing to leave his shipmates to depend themselves, but a child? In the dream he remembered her as much younger than she was in reality. She was five or six years old, a small helpless thing swept up in something too big for her. She was alone, cornered by a beast from nightmares...

He felt an instinctual parallel between himself and her, although he had been older than she seemed to be now. No one had helped him on that first full moon or on any of the ones after, but he could help her. He would.

He grabbed his knife from the pack at the foot of his bunk and climbed the ladder to the deck, where it seemed to him Tonks and the creature had gone. But there was no ship’s deck at the top of the ladder as he expected. He was surrounded by walls of crumbling earth, dark and moist. A cave.

There was a lamp by his feet, and he picked it up. Its flickering light showed a long tunnel that curved away with no end in sight. He could smell the thing here even more strongly than before, and a distant rustling confirmed his suspicions. This must be the creature’s den, and judging by the footprints in the damp earth, Tonks had followed it willingly into the darkness.

As he started down the tunnel, the knife in his hand seemed far too small. He knew he should hurry, but a thick lethargy settled over him like sometimes happens in dreams. His feet moved slowly, as if wading through viscous mud. The walls of the cave glittered strangely around him, and he spared a few heavy steps to examine them. Wedged and half buried in the damp mud was a bizarre assortment of objects. There was fine silverware, scraps of embroidered silk, gilded candlesticks, and sparkling jewelry. There were books decorated in gold and bright colors. There was even the hilt of a sword sticking out from one wall. Soft leather wound around a hilt made of intertwined gold and silver. A few inches of sturdy looking steel were visible. The rest of the blade was wedged deep into the earthen wall. It would be a better defense than the knife, even if he barely knew how to use it. He tried to pull it out, but it wouldn’t budge. Even scraping at the dirt around it had little effect. He left it behind along with the other treasures.

The further he went into the cave, the more thickly they coated the walls. Ribbons and beaded strands of jewels hung from the ceiling. Coins of copper, silver, and gold were embedded in the dirt walls like tiles in a mosaic. The floor was strewn with rumpled velvet clothing and fine carpets. At some point the dirt became completely obscured and he was surrounded by more opulence than he would ever see in his waking life.

Was this a dragon cave, then? What else would collect such a horde of riches? He had thought dragons more the type to sleep on a pile of gold rather than use it as wallpaper, but then he had never actually met a dragon. Yet.

He walked on, ignoring the finery beneath his feet, still battling the strange heaviness imposed by the dream. He could hear the sound of the beast’s rattling breath now. He rounded another bend in the tunnel and found it narrowing to an end. There was a rounded shape huddled in the furthest corner. The creature was curled into a ball with no sign of its overall structure. It was huge, even larger than it had seemed in the cabin of the ship. And rather than the pallid skin and drapes of stinking seaweed Remus had expected from a sea monster, or the scales of a dragon, it was completely covered in dark feathers.

Remus couldn’t see Tonks anywhere. He moved closer to it, trying to look around to its other side. An eye opened in the midst of the feathers. It was as big as the palm of Remus’ hand and bright yellow. He swung the knife around towards it, but the beast did not move.

“Where is she?” He held his head and the knife high, forcing a bravado into his voice that he did not quite feel.

The thing sighed, a great whoosh of breath that stirred the air more than the lungs of any creature should have been able to. The ribbons and jewels dangling from the ceiling swayed in response. One feathered appendage—a wing?—separated from the rest. It lifted to reveal Tonks, curled comfortably on her side, fast asleep. 

As soon as Remus saw her, all of his fear drained out of him with an abruptness only possible in dreams. “She’s not hurt,” he said, relieved. She moved in her sleep, smiling a little, but she didn’t wake. “She’s all right.”

“She is safe.” Remus turned, trying to place the voice that had seemed to come from all around him, as if the gilded cave itself had spoken. “Are you?”

Was the beast asking if Remus was safe from the world, or if the world was safe from him? Either way, he would have to lie.

“Yes.” He addressed the eye, which blinked slowly. As if sensing his dishonesty, the wing settled protectively back down around Tonks, tucking her out of sight. Now that Remus was closer he could see that many of the feathers were glistening and clumped together with blood.

“You’re hurt.” If he had been awake he might have been surprised by how quickly his terror had transformed into concern, but in the context of the dream he didn’t give it a second thought.

“Not for long,” the creature replied. The long feathers rose and fell with its breath, and the eye began to drift shut.

“Why are you here?” it asked.

“I don’t know...” Remus said. “I was just passing through.”

The golden eye opened again and considered him.

“You can’t live like this,” it said.

“What?” Remus took an alarmed step backwards. Had it guessed his secret?

“You have to put it back.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand...”

The eye closed, as if pained by his answer, and the creature shifted, turning to the gilded wall.

“Then go away,” the cave echoed at him. Suddenly the sumptuous fabrics beneath his feet tore, and he fell down, slowly, out of the dream and into the darkness of sleep.

+++

He woke abruptly to the sound of water rushing through pipes above his head. It washed the dream from his mind before he could remember it very well. The light peeking around the curtains had the slant of midday. He had slept late. He stretched but remained lounging in bed while the shower ran, indulging in a rare bit of laziness.

Once he heard Tonks leave the shower and go back into her room, he went upstairs for a shower as well. The luxury of plumbing was mitigated by the filthy state of the bathroom, but he succeeded in getting himself and his clothes clean. He put on his spare clothes and hung up the wet ones to dry in the bathroom. Hopefully Tonks would still be open to letting him stay. He was not opposed to being a child-minder for a few weeks while he searched through the books littering the house. His fingers itched to get ahold of them already. He would only have twenty six days or so to look through them all.

While shaving he eyed the book propping up the leg of the bathtub speculatively. The spine was turned to the wall, and there was no way he would be able to see the title without shifting the whole tub. Best to leave that one for last. It was probably terrible anyways, if it was being used like that.

He swung his bag over his shoulder and left the bathroom. He shut the door, turned around, and immediately stepped backwards in shock. Sitting alertly right outside the bathroom, as if it had known to wait for him, was a black dog. A _huge,_ black dog.

There couldn’t be a dog here. Tonks didn’t have a dog. He had been here for a full day, he would have seen it. Especially one as big as this!

Remus did not like dogs because dogs did not like him. They seemed to have reached a group decision that he smelled suspicious, and he had a strong aversion to being bitten. This dog seemed no different. It slunk closer. Remus pressed against the wall as its nostrils flared, taking in his scent.

“Tonks!” he called hoarsely, trying not to antagonize the animal further. “There-there’s a dog! Did you let in a stray?”

The dog pushed closer still, and to his astonishment it started to grow. The head shot towards the ceiling, and its front paws lifted off the floor. The whole body blurred and shifted, and before Remus could take another breath, he was looking up into the face of a human. A very _large_ human, with pale skin and hair and gray-blue eyes.

“I’m Sirius,” the man said, with a smile that was more challenging than welcoming. He pointed an accusatory finger at Remus’ chest. “And if you ask me... _you_ are the stray.”

“I told you he’d come back!” Tonks said, bursting from her room.

“Thank you for your faith, little lemon.” Sirius turned back to Remus, smiling more authentically now. “And have you been making trouble, stray?”

“Yes, he has!” Tonks answered before Remus could. “He’s been poking around everywhere, even the front door!”

“Hmm...a nosy one are you?”

Remus drew himself up as tall as he could manage, which brought him nearly to the wizard’s shoulder level.

“My name is Remus. And while I will not deny I have a healthy level of curiosity, in my defense I also helped brew a Strengthening potion and made dinner.”

“Yes, I heard about that.”

“I even bought the food, as she seems to have been surviving on little more than some old potatoes.”

Sirius glanced over at Tonks, who stared sullenly at the floor.

“I had to buy potion ingredients,” she muttered.

“There’s plenty of food now,” the wizard said lightly. “I’ve just come back from the market. Let’s have breakfast, shall we?” He guided Tonks towards the stairs with a gentle hand on her shoulder. Looking back at Remus, he added, “You can join us if you like.”

Remus followed them down to the main room. Piled on top of the already cluttered workbench were several baskets with meat, bread, eggs, cheese, and a few vegetables. There were even jars of jam and pickles—plenty enough food for him to join them without feeling guilty. Apparently, with the wizard back in the house, funds were no longer in short supply.

Remus settled back on the couch while the wizard laid bacon into a pan. Tonks perched on a stool nearby, and they talked together too quietly for him to hear. Remus’ heart sank when the smell of the bacon drifted over to him. It was burning.

Remus sighed and pulled himself off the couch. The wizard and Tonks stopped talking as he came closer, which narrowed the topic of conversation considerably. Sirius seemed to remember the bacon then, but Remus was already sliding the depressingly charred slices onto a plate.

“Do you mind?” he asked, gesturing to the pan and the unprepared food.

Sirius nodded permission, and Remus quickly sliced an onion and tossed it into the pan with some other spices. He arranged fresh bacon on the other side of the large pan. After a few minutes he added several eggs to scramble. The eggs and the bacon finished cooking at the same time and he divided it all between the three of them. He left the burned bacon on its own plate, ostracized, to be taken by whoever was desperate enough to eat it. That person turned out to be Tonks, who absorbed the food on her plate with the power of impending adolescence. 

Sirius laughed and poked her side playfully. “No wonder you ran out of food! You eat twice as much as when I left!”

“I want to get more mass!” She leaned forward precariously on her stool, reaching for jam to spread on a slice of bread. “Then I can be tall and fat at the same time!”

“A worthy goal.” Sirius pushed the jam closer indulgently. She heaped it onto the bread in a huge messy pile.

“Tonks told me you’ve been traveling,” Sirius said to Remus. “Where are you headed?”

“Actually, I was thinking I might stay here a while if you’re willing. I can cook.” He gestured at the now empty plates. “And clean.” He tactfully refrained from gesturing at _everything._ “Perhaps you would find my skills of use. I’d ask nothing but my room and board.”

Sirius laughed. “I was going to offer you a ride, but I see you’d rather move in!”

“I wouldn’t stay long. I’ll want to be moving on in a few weeks.”

“Hmm. Where are you from then?”

“You won’t have heard of it. I’ve been traveling a long time.”

“Well, it doesn’t take a genius to notice you’re not from anywhere nearby.”

That was true enough. Remus spoke the language well, but he probably had an Alberian accent. He had lived there for a few years in the reassuringly transient company of a merchant who spent more time out of the city than in it. Eventually, though, even he had noticed Remus was never around on the full moon. Remus had returned to the house they shared to find it full of bounty hunters. He had escaped, but only because the hunters had not yet been paid and were thus a bit lackluster about giving it their all.

His appearance also set him apart. His warm brown skin and well distinguished curls were a district contrast to the shades of olive and tawny tan shared by most of the people of the region. The situation was not new to him. Everywhere he had travelled, the people he met looked different from him in some way, straighter hair, narrower eyes, smaller noses, and usually lighter skin, with the exception of Inhico, where the extreme cool black of the most common skin color had made his own rich brown skin look bright in comparison. Wherever he went, including here, there were always some people that looked like him, but not many.

“You don’t exactly look like a local yourself,” he said. He had very rarely seen skin as white as Sirius’, with not a pink undertone to be seen, and his pale blonde hair was nearly the same color.

Sirius just shrugged. “I know where I’m from, where are _you_ from?”

“Jharm, to the west of Tsaphan and Farqtan.”

Sirius’ eyes widened. “Jharm’s tens of thousands of miles away! How did you get all the way here?”

“Walking, mostly.”

“It must have taken you months!”

“Twelve years actually, but I’ve stopped a lot.”

“Twelve, exactly? Really?”

Remus thought, and nodded, although he wasn’t sure why that was important.

“But then you must have left when you were my age!” Tonks said. He just shrugged, beginning to get uncomfortable with the topic. He had several convincing and theoretically entertaining stories to chose from that could explain why he had left home, but he did not enjoy telling them. None of them touched on the truth.

“And you were only in Marsh Folding a few weeks?” Sirius spun his fork around his fingers in contemplation. “What do you think, Tonks? Shall we let him stay?”

Tonks gave Remus a stern, evaluating look that was spoiled by the jam on her face. “I miss having things cleaned up. And he’s pretty nice I think.”

“All right then, it’s done.”

“Really? Thank you!” Remus looked around the room, feeling a buzz of excitement, already planning how he would transform this messy disaster of a house, all the while secretly working his way through the books.

Sirius stood up, stretching his arms above his head. His elbows knocked against the rafters above. Remus’ gaze lingered briefly on the long lines of his body. He turned his eyes away and began to gather up the plates. He would have to start somewhere.

“How long has it been since we moved?” Sirius asked Tonks.

“Um...awhile. Maybe five days?” She bit her lip guiltily.

Remus frowned. Moved what?

Sirius’ brow creased slightly. “Five days? Well. Soon mended. Where did you say you were headed, Remus? I’ll give you a ride.”

“East...but I thought I could stay?”

Sirius brightened and turned towards the stairs to the upper door Remus had discovered the night before, which led to the balcony overlooking the Waste.

“Aha! Your nosiness has not yet uncovered all our secrets, I see. Time will solve that, I’m sure. But this one I will gladly reveal.” He gestured Remus up the stairs with a flourish. The balcony at the top of the stairs stretched out in front of the house like the prow of a ship. Railings made of metal pipes lined the edges. Tonks followed them out, additional slices of buttered toast in hand. She sat on the edge of the balcony with her skirt dangling over the side in open air. Her arms draped over the lower part of the railing.

The levers on the balcony seemed much less eerie by the dingy midday light of the Waste than they had in rainy darkness. Now Remus recognized that one of them was a ship’s wheel. He peered over the edge of the balcony. There was no water below, just the dull gray plants of the moor, yet Sirius stood in front of the wheel with all the bravado of a ship’s captain on her maiden voyage. He grasped a large lever to the left of the wheel.

“Watch back there,” he said to Remus, gesturing at the base of the house.

There were several large pillars supporting the weight of the skirts of the top-heavy house, three on each side. Sirius slowly pulled the lever back towards himself, and there was a chorus of clanking and groaning metal as two of the pillars shuddered and wrenched themselves out of the ground. Remus could see now that the pillars were jointed in many places, and they ended in four-pointed stars, not unlike the feet of a bird.

They were legs, and there were six of them, all lifting in turn now to shake off the mud that had settled on their feet. Then they spread out, braced against the ground, and heaved in unison. Remus hid a gasp and clutched the railing as the entire house was levered into the air.

“Let’s go!” Tonks cheered.

Sirius grinned and pushed another lever forward. The house began to move as the legs lunged forward in pairs. At first they seemed graceless, but they were coordinated somehow so that the individually chaotic motions of the legs came together to produce smooth movement. The balcony on which they stood hardly shifted, and Remus felt only the soothing motion of a ship in a calm sea.

He had never seen anything quite like it. He wondered what propelled the machines that moved the legs. It could be the same type of fuel the modern autos used, but there was no sign of the thick black smoke those machines released. Perhaps it was powered the same way as the huge airships this country threw at its enemies like other places threw pistol shot.

He turned back towards the others. Sirius beamed over his shoulder at him like a child with a new toy. The wind pulled at the edges of his pink and yellow coat, which he wore like a cape, with the arms dangling empty from his shoulders, making him look even broader. In the cloudy light his pale hair seemed to have a cold blue tint.

“What do you think?” Sirius asked.

Remus glanced back at the rest of the house. “It’s ingenious.”

“East, right?” Sirius consulted a compass from his pocket and adjusted their heading. “How far do you want to go? Do you have a place in mind?”

Remus shrugged. “Just as far as you’ll take me.”

“We’ll reach the edge of our territory in about a week. I don’t mind going over there, we haven’t been to the Blue Waste in a long time.”

“A week?” He thought about the sheer number of books he would have to look through. If he kept his commitment to cleaning the house and cooking meals, it would be hard to find enough time to even read the titles if he only had a week. “I’m not sure I can do a complete job cleaning up in that amount of time...”

Sirius glanced back at him, sliding the compass back into his pocket. “You can stay longer if you like. If things work out. I can drop you off wherever you like when you’re ready.”

“All right then.” He leaned back against the wall and realized from the warmth that the bricks behind him must be part of the chimney.

“How does it all work?” He waved his hand behind him at the skittering legs.

“The energy comes from air. It’s pulled in up there and processed in that chamber around the corner on this side—” Sirius gestured vaguely, trying to explain while steering the house between marshy puddles. “I can show you later if you like.”

“I can show him for you!” Tonks bounced up from her perch, licking butter from her fingers. “If we climb around to the engines while Sirius drives, then you can see them working!”

Remus looked back at the irregular protrusions of the house doubtfully, remembering her clumsiness with potions the day before. Now that the base of the house hovered in the air, supported by its many legs, it was quite a long way down. Glancing over at Sirius, he thought he detected a similar flicker of concern.

“I should probably get started cleaning,” he said with pretend reluctance. “I think I’ll start upstairs. Bathroom first, or maybe bedrooms...”

“You’re going to clean the bedrooms too?” She inched towards the door, eyebrows pinched with worry.

“Of course!” Remus grinned wickedly. “And I am sure yours is the worst of them all!”

She gasped indignantly. “It is not!”

“He won’t clean it unless you want him to. It’s up to you.” Sirius said, giving Remus a look.

“Oh.” She considered this. Then she drew herself up importantly while edging into the open doorway. “You may clean my room if you like.”

“How kind of you,” Remus said.

“But not yet!” She dashed out of sight. He laughed at the thunder of her crashing down one flight of steps, through the main room, and up the stairs on the opposite side.

“Well, it’s nice to know who is in charge in this house,” Remus said lightly.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you always let her make decisions like that?”

Sirius shrugged. “It’s her room.”

“You also let her decide whether I would stay or not.”

“Just because she’s young doesn’t mean she can’t decide things.”

“I agree. But I think most people would not.”

Sirius frowned thoughtfully. Remus pressed his back against the heat of the chimney, reflexively trying to soothe sore muscles that weren’t actually there, thanks to the Healing potion. The churning machines had quieted once they found their rhythm and it was now possible to carry on a conversation at a normal level.

“I’ve known Tonks a long time. Since she was born, actually. She’s had a hard life.” Sirius sighed. “I suppose we both have. But there have been many times where she wasn’t allowed to control important things. Things anyone should be able to decide for themselves. So now I let her, when it’s possible.” He looked back at the house, smiling. “That’s why I made the castle, to give us both some better choices.”

“Castle?” Remus raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, that’s what we call it. Our little joke.”

“It is certainly more...rustic than other castles I’ve seen.” Remus smiled behind Sirius’ back.

“It suits us.”

Remus braced himself to ask one last uncomfortable question. “You two seem close, more so than most mentors are with their apprentices.”

“We’ve known each other a long time, like I said.”

“And are you...romantically involved?”

“ _What?_ No!” Sirius whirled to face him, shock and disgust overtaking his face. “She’s only twelve!”

Remus shrugged, pretending neutrality. “That doesn’t stop some people.”

“It stops me! And it had better stop you too, or you can forget the whole thing!” He reached for the lever to slow down the castle, as if he would throw Remus out on the spot. He had completely stopped looking ahead, and Remus watched the castle trudging ahead on its own with some trepidation. “If you touch her...” Sirius elaborated, “I’ll kill you.”

Remus shook his head, reassured by the vigor of Sirius’ disapproval. “You don’t have to worry.”

Still, Sirius kept his hand on the lever like a person might keep their hand on a gun. From this angle, the wind blew aside his hair revealing dangling earrings of the same hard gray stone as his eyes. He seemed like someone who would carry out his threats.

“You misunderstand me,” Remus said. “It’s just that she seems very attached to you, and I wouldn’t want to stay here if you were taking advantage of her.”

“I see.” Sirius slowly withdrew his hand from the lever, allowing the house to continue. He spared a glance for their heading, but it was free of obstacles. “Well, it’s not like that. And you will not disturb her in any way, do you understand?”

“Yes. You don’t need to worry.” Remus repeated.

Apparently somewhat mollified, Sirius turned back to the wheel. Remus relaxed against the chimney, grateful that the moment was over and sorry that it had been necessary.

“I think I’ll do the bathroom first after all,” he said, and he felt Sirius’ eyes on his back as he went inside.

+++

“Wow...” Tonk’s eyes widened with awe. “How’d you make it so shiny?”

Remus glanced up at the now pristine bathroom sink and faucet. “Lemon juice. And a lot of patience.”

“I tried to clean them once, but it didn’t work. But I just used soap.” She touched the tip of the faucet with one finger. She frowned at the resulting fingerprint and rubbed it off with her sleeve.

“Your water has minerals in it. It builds up on the tap. The lemon juice takes it off. See?”

He scrubbed at the bathtub faucet. Actual chunks of grime flaked off and fell into the tub, revealing the shiny brass beneath. Tonks huddled next to the toilet, rapt.

The black dog nosed its way into the room. Remus eyed it nervously. Could the wizard change his form whenever he wanted? That hardly seemed fair.

The dog weaseled its way between them. It leaned over Tonks’ shoulder to sniff at the toilet bowl and sneezed.

“And that is vinegar,” Remus said, a little smugly. The dog huffed at him and curled up awkwardly in the small space available.

“I had a dog when I was your age,” Remus said to Tonks. “She couldn’t turn into a wizard though.”

“This is Padfoot. He’s a good dog, aren’t you?” Tonks cooed and wrapped her arms around the mass of fur. The dog swished his tail, treating Remus to a mouthful of hair, which was probably an intentional snub on Padfoot’s part.

“I’m sorry, did you need to...” He gestured at the toilet, using his other arm as a barrier between himself and the tail.

“No, it just smells _so_ good down there! Isn’t it done yet?” She was referring to the stew he had put up to cook earlier.

“Probably, but isn’t it a little early for dinner?” He squinted at the small window. The perpetually gray clouds of the Waste made it hard to tell. He hadn’t spent this much time inside in a while.

“But I’m hungry!”

Padfoot huffed pointedly, hackles raising. Remus held up his hands in surrender. “All right, all right, I get the message! Tonks is the boss. I’ll go finish it up then.”

Tonks and Padfoot hurtled down the stairs, getting in each other’s way. Remus followed with relative sedateness. They hovered near the stove with nearly identical expressions of pleading expectation. He shooed them off.

“If you want to be useful, clear some space over there.” He waved his hand at the workbench, which was once again cluttered with bottles, books, and other debris. Apparently they had been busy that afternoon.

Girl and dog both skulked off, leaving him to scrounge for a ladle and bowls. The cupboards were mostly empty, which was only to be expected considering the amount of dishes and utensils littering the house. He discovered that there was an icebox after all, thoroughly hidden under piles of dishes. The ice compartment was empty, but the interior was still cool. Magic, he supposed, but no amount of cold was enough to keep weeks-old produce and milk from going bad. He shut it again with a shudder. That was a task for another day.

One drawer stuck partway open, which he took as a sure sign of a ladle inside. He rattled it around and yanked. It popped open revealing the promised ladle and a flat, brown package that radiated a warm smell. Remus’ eyes widened with recognition. He picked it up and carefully peeled back the paper, hoping it was indeed—oh it was! Chocolate.

For some reason, most of the places he had been to didn’t seem to have chocolate. Maybe it couldn’t grow there, or perhaps people just didn’t care for it. To the people who did buy it, it was a treasured luxury.

He broke off a tiny piece, taking a moment to savor the smell before placing it in his mouth. It melted enticingly, and he had to brace himself against the counter. It tasted like home.

“Here,” a voice said from right behind him. He startled and turned, still gripping the ladle, to face Sirius. He pushed the wrapped chocolate behind himself and tried not to look guilty.

“Sorry,” Sirius said with a smooth smile. “Were you looking for these?” He held out three bowls. They were simple white china, and so clean that they seemed to light up the room. 

Remus stared. “Where did you find those? I haven’t seen a clean dish since I got here!”

“Oh. No, I made them. Just now.” Sirius shrugged and handed them over, eyeing the stew.

“You _made_ them?”

“We don’t wash dishes much. I just make more instead. It’s not hard. Here, look.” He pulled a white sheet of paper from a stack on a nearby shelf. He crumpled and twisted it in his hands and it shifted, hardening, into a fourth white china bowl.

Remus shook his head. “Only a wizard would think that makes more sense than washing dishes. No wonder you have so many dirty dishes everywhere. They probably won’t even fit in the cupboards once I clean them!”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that. We have another use for them. Actually, we could show you.” He turned to Tonks, who was shoving aside the mess on the workbench enough to leave space in front of the stools for dishes. “What do you think, Tonks? Want to make a trip to the plate pit?”

“Sure.” She winced as one of the potion bottles crashed to ground. “Sorry!”

“Let me guess.” Remus ladled stew into the bowls. “There’s a big pit around here somewhere where you throw all your dirty dishes. What a waste.”

Sirius accepted two of the bowls and carried them to the workbench. “There’s a little more to it than that. You’ll see.”

+++

Once they had finished eating, they went around the house gathering dishes. Sirius put them all into a large sack and led the way upstairs to Tonks’ room.

“This way!” Tonks said. She pushed open her bedroom window. To Remus’ surprise, she climbed right out. This was the window with the lake view he had seen shortly after arriving. He realized it was a fifth location entirely, as this picturesque mountain scene could not be Porthaven, Kingsbury, the Waste, or the void behind the black dot.

“This place is full of surprises,” he muttered, peering over the sill of the window. Brass handles on the wall served as hand and footholds down from a height of more than ten feet. Tonks was already near the bottom. Remus clambered out and Sirius followed with the sack of dishes slung carefully over his shoulder. Remus dropped to the ground and looked back at the house. From this location it appeared to be a gray stone cottage, two short stories tall. Except for the brightly curtained window they had just climbed through, it looked deserted. Ivy twined over the crumbling wall near where Sirius was climbing down.

Tonks disappeared over a hill to the right of the lake, a few hundred yards away, and Remus followed. On the other side was, as he had predicted, a pit. It was several yards deep and about twice as wide as he was tall. The bottom was so scattered with shards of dishes it looked like sharp drifts of snow. They sparkled in the light from the setting sun.

Tonks jittered a little with impatience while Sirius opened the bag and began stacking the dishes on a nearby tree stump.

“The plate pit is for when you’re angry,” she explained. “You say what you’re angry about and throw the plate.”

She picked up the top plate from the stack, which was nearly as tall as herself. “You have to start with small stuff. Like this...I’m mad that oranges are out of season, and I hardly got to have any!”

She hurled the plate down into the pit and grinned when it smashed.

“My turn,” Sirius said, picking up a plate of his own. “I hate burning the bacon!” His plate sailed to its doom.

“Oh! I hate that too!” said Tonks, tossing another.

“Burning bacon is pretty terrible,” Remus agreed. He picked up a plate and dropped it into the pit. It cracked into two neat pieces, which was not particularly satisfying.

“No, you have to throw it harder! Like this!” Tonks swung her arm down vigorously to demonstrate and looked at him expectantly.

“It helps if you’re actually angry,” Sirius said.

“I’m not really angry right now...” Remus shrugged.

“You’ll warm up to it.” Sirius winked.

Remus shivered a bit. The evening wind was picking up. Tonks was bouncing on her toes, but she still seemed to be waiting for him.

“Here’s one,” Remus said. “I’m mad that I lost my good winter cloak.”

He threw another plate, making sure to use more force than last time. It smashed into countless pieces, and he felt the corresponding thrill of destruction.

“What happened to your cloak?” Sirius asked.

“I left it behind.” In the innkeeper’s wine cellar, he didn’t say. “But I can make a new one. I’m a tailor by profession.”

“Neat!” Tonks said. “Oh, that reminds me of one. I like growing, but then I have to change my size and I _hate_ it when my clothes don’t fit!”

Another plate went crashing down, shortly followed by one from Sirius.

“Growing up is hard.” He nodded to her without condescension. She bit her lip, and the knuckles clutching her next plate were white.

“You can also just think what you’re mad about if you don’t want to say it out loud.” She scowled at the plate and tossed it in.

That suited Remus much better, and for the next few minutes the three of them were occupied with their own private miseries. Remus sent plates crashing into oblivion for the pain that rarely went away, for everyone he had hurt, for the places he had been turned away from, for the family he had lost, for the people he had naively thought could become family—always before they discovered his secret. The sailing circles of white porcelain reminded him of the full moon, and he found he enjoyed shattering them. The repetitive motion sent blood swirling through his arms and head. It roused his heart and lungs. Obviously throwing dishes was futile, but he was starting to see the appeal. 

Tonks more than matched him in destruction, and Sirius threw several of his own. The pile remaining shrank down to less than half of what it had been.

“I hate this war,” Sirius said.

 _Smash_ , his plate answered.

 _Smash_ , _Smash_ , echoed two more dishes.

“I have yet to see a war that succeeds in doing anything but killing people,” Remus agreed.

“I hate seeing people die.” Sirius’ voice shook slightly. Another round of crashing followed.

“I hate the war! I hate it!” Tonks cried out suddenly, voice rising with every word. She whirled to face Sirius. “I hate it when you leave!” She grabbed the top plate and threw it, growling, using both hands and all of her strength. Her aim was slightly off, barely missing Sirius on the way to the pit.

Remus reached for a plate to add his agreement, but a look from Sirius stopped him. Tonks snatched the next few plates from under Remus’ hand and threw them all at the same time, teeth gritted with anger.

“It’s not _fair!_ I hate being _alone._ I’m no good at selling things, and I hate running out of money! And I never know when you will come _back_!”

Nearly every word was punctuated with another shattered dish. Shards of porcelain splattered upwards like water in the wake of a thrown rock. Remus was a little taken aback by the force of her fury, but Sirius just breathed out and settled down on the stump next to the remaining plates. She continued on, yelling futile protests and scrabbling for each new plate before the previous one had hit the ground. At that pace, it was mere minutes before the dishes were all gone. When she reached and found that none were left, she roared with frustration and pounded her fists on the bare stump.

“I hate it! I hate you!” Her arm swung directly towards Sirius’ face, to Remus’ horror, but Sirius deflected her easily. His face was stony with suppressed emotion.

“I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. Tonks sobbed suddenly and her head dropped to his shoulder. He smoothed his hand over her back. “I hate it too, little lemon. So much. So much there aren’t enough dishes in the whole world to show you how much.”

“Then why don’t you stay! Why won’t you promise me you’ll stay!” She shouted the words into his now damp coat. Sirius sighed and rested his forehead on top of her haphazard hair, which glowed brightly in the sunset. When he didn’t respond, her sobs intensified. He lifted her into his lap and wrapped his arms around her, but he didn’t seem to have any more words of comfort to give. Neither of them looked at Remus.

Not wanting to intrude any further, he sat down quietly on the new spring grass. He didn’t understand. Surely there must be other options, perhaps another mentor or a family that would take Tonks in if Sirius had to leave again. Or why didn’t they just take their magical “castle” and go? They could travel beyond the influence of the government until the war was over.

It seemed like a years-old problem. Remus was not naive enough to assume they hadn’t thought of these solutions already, so instead of offering ideas, he just sat and watched the rapidly darkening sky until Tonks’ sobs quieted and they went back inside.

+++

Tonks flopped disconsolately on the couch and stared into the fire. Sirius hovered around her for a minute and then sat in one of the armchairs. He pulled a book from a pile under the chair without checking the title. His eyes fixed on it, but the pages did not turn.

Remus wandered over to the kitchen area of the room and sighed. It was more clear now that all the dishes were gone, but many piles of pots and silverware remained. He poked at them a bit, but with the emotional residue in the room he didn’t have the spirit to throw himself into cleaning. He found the small package of chocolate in the corner and unwrapped it thoughtfully. He surveyed the kitchen’s equipment and the tiny oven in the potbellied stove. It would do.

Half an hour later he was scooping rounds of chocolate cookie dough onto a small baking tray. There was only room for six cookies, but that was plenty.

“You look very delicious,” he addressed the dough absently. “Maybe you will help those two open up. Food does that.”

Not even the smell of the cookies baking roused Tonks from her stupor, but when Remus brought them over on a plate she sat up to accept one. She took a bite and sighed expansively, letting the rest dangle from her fingers. Remus thought producing chocolate cookies out of nowhere deserved a little more enthusiasm, but he said nothing.

Sirius took one too, and Remus sat down across from him in the second armchair, shifting a bit at the bite of the crooked springs. Sirius took a bite and frowned down at his cookie. He turned his frown on Remus, who shrugged, bewildered. It wasn’t as if he had burned them. Sirius narrowed his eyes at him as if the cookie was a personal affront.

“All right, that’s enough.” He reached out and plucked Tonks’ cookie from her hand.

“Hey!” This, at least, did rouse her. “What did you do that for?”

“They’re a little strong for you.” Tonks rolled her eyes and flopped backwards on the couch, brooding with her arms crossed over her chest.

“Strong?” Remus asked incredulously. “They’re just chocolate!”

“ _You_ eat one then.” There was a totally unnecessary tone of challenge in Sirius’ voice.

Remus did. They were very good, just like he had thought from sampling the batter. Maybe Sirius was some kind of health food fanatic. He seemed perplexed by Remus’ willingness, but as soon as Remus had finished the cookie he learned forward accusingly.

“Who’s side are you on?”

“Side?” Remus asked. “Side of what?”

“The war!”

Remus shook his head defensively. “I’m not on a side! I told you, I’m not from around here.”

“Then why are you here?”

Remus paused to think. He took another cookie since it seemed like no one else was going to eat them. “I was in Marsh Folding picking crops for a few weeks. Then I decided to move on and walked right into your doorway.”

“Is that so? You just _happened_ to find us? Out here in the middle of the Waste?”

“Yes, actually.” Remus sighed, exasperated. “Look, I’m not a spy or whatever you think. I’m just a traveler. I don’t know anything about the war except what I saw on posters in Marsh Folding.”

“And what exactly did you see?”

“The usual stuff, fight for honor, slay the savage Strangians! That kind of thing. And that the war started when they kidnapped your prince.”

Sirius leaned back in his chair, making a thoughtful steeple with his fingers against his mouth. “That’s just propaganda. It has nothing to do with the prince. The Royal Sorceress has been Regent and running the country on behalf of the prince for almost a decade. She doesn’t want to give it up.”

“I see.” Remus offered Tonks another cookie, but she didn’t seem to notice the plate in front of her. She was staring into the fire.

Sirius glared at him and took the plate. He stood up and brushed the crumbs from his coat. “Enough. Bedtime.” He pointed a warning finger at Remus. “No more... _baking_.”

He transformed into Padfoot and bounded over to Tonks, licking her elbows until she laughed and headed towards the stairs in surrender.

+++

Remus woke early the next morning to the awkward lurching of the castle getting to its feet. The initial movement was jerky, but within a few paces it settled into the swaying rhythm he had found so soothing before. After a few days, he began to learn the other rhythms of the household as well.

Sirius woke early each morning and moved the castle east for an hour or two. He spent the rest of his days busy: making potions, preparing spells, and helping customers. There were not many of those, as Sirius had turned the signs in both the Kingsbury and Porthaven windows to “Closed” while he made up stock.

Even in the evenings, after everyone had eaten the dinner Remus cooked, Sirius didn’t really stop. If he did sit down, it would be to read a book on potions or spellmaking. The volumes piled up around his chair. He was often still there when Remus went to sleep himself. Remus took this industriousness as a bad sign. Sirius could be trying to prepare the shop for another absence. But if he was expecting to be called back to the war, he didn’t speak of it.

The only time Remus saw Sirius relax was when he changed into Padfoot. While Sirius was almost frantically active, Padfoot was lazy. At night he slept on the foot of Tonks’ bed. During the day he was usually be found lounging at her feet, unless Remus himself was busy, in which case Padfoot was guaranteed to be underfoot.

Remus found himself still somewhat wary around Padfoot. The dog gave every indication of being gentle, but it was hard to shake years of habit. At least it seemed this animagus-dog was not able to smell his curse as regular dogs could, or he would surely have been driven out on the first day. Gradually his wariness was tempered with annoyance, since a dog-that-was-really-a-wizard should have enough sense not to stand between him and the stove while he was cooking. He became accustomed to shoving Padfoot unceremoniously out of the way many times a day.

“It’s not his fault," Tonks said when Remus complained of this. “Sirius says when he’s Padfoot he thinks like a dog."

“How would he even know?" Remus rolled his eyes, pushing the dog aside yet again. Why would anyone _want_ to think like an animal anyways?

Tonks’ sullenness over Sirius’ absence had mellowed quickly. Sirius proved to be an indulgent mentor. He let her sleep as late as she liked, so it was often well past breakfast by the time she came downstairs. Once she was there, she followed him around eagerly. She hovered near him when he was working, trying to find ways to be helpful but often breaking something instead. Sirius treated her clumsiness with resigned good humor and never did more than hand her a broom and dustpan to clean up the mess.

Despite the hassle of trying to clean up after a clumsy apprentice and a dog that shed hair faster than any natural animal should be able to grow it, Remus found himself content with his role in the household. In fact, thanks to the Healing potion Tonks had given him, he wasn’t just content, he was thriving. He could lift whole armfuls of books without his back protesting. When he carried a bucket of water up the stairs for mopping, his left knee moved smoothly instead of clicking painfully on each step. Gripping the small brush he used for cleaning pots didn’t immediately cramp his fingers. He could even hoist a broom high above his head to sweep dust and cobwebs from the rafters.

“Move along, spiders!" he called out cheerfully. “You are no longer welcome!"

“Here now!" Sirius put his body between the broom and the scurrying insects, who had taken Remus’ advice and were headed for the door. “Don’t kick them out! They’re useful!"

“Useful? What for?" Remus lowered the broom and tried to brush a trailing cobweb from his arm. He was grateful he had wrapped a clean cloth around his hair to protect it from the dust.

“Potion ingredients! Spidersilk, dead flies, spider legs…" Sirius knelt and put his hands down in front of the fleeing spiders, as if to herd them back into the house. They ran over his fingers without pausing. “Aww, leave them alone, Remus."

“Ugh, fine. You can stay in the attic," he called to the spiders, “but I better not catch you down here."

“Thank you." Sirius watched the spiders obediently file up the walls towards the upper stories. Remus was surprised at their compliance. It must be some side effect of living around all this magic.

“Now, out of the way, unless you want to be banished to the attic too." He waved the broom at Sirius in mock threat. “You’ve hired me to clean, and clean I will! And once I’m done, this house will _stay_ clean!"

“I suppose it will," said Sirius. He backed out of the way as obediently as the spiders.

At the end of the day Remus returned the broom to the corner of the living room where he had found it. He had chuckled, on the first day, when he found a broom in every room of the house—even the bathroom!—yet the floors were thick with dust. He had collected them all and put them in the broom cupboard, only to find Sirius putting them back a few hours later.

“Don’t move the brooms," he said, although he wouldn’t explain why. Brooms were a witch thing, weren’t they? Did wizards use them too? Perhaps it was pure marketing then, but putting them in the bathroom and on the balcony was bit much. It wasn’t like the customers ever went up there.

Remus wondered if there was a broom in the locked room upstairs, which he had been told was Sirius’ bedroom, although as far as Remus could tell he never slept in there and only ever went in there to change his clothes. He had offered to clean that room as well, but Sirius had declined, as there were “delicate magical instruments" inside. Sirius promised to clean it himself. Remus saw him emerging from the room the next day bearing an armful of dirty rags. This satisfied his warrior-like determination to make sure every corner of the small house was cleaned, if not his curiosity.

Even beating dust out of the rugs didn’t give Remus pain. All the activity winded him sometimes, and unused muscles became sore, but it was nothing like the grinding, constant pain he had become so used to over the long years since he had first been cursed. It was like he had been given a whole new body, one that had never been regularly broken, patched, and pushed too far. He had energy for every task the house demanded and more. In fact, his zeal carried him through the cleaning so much faster than he had anticipated that he had to force himself to slow down. He would need the whole month to make a good survey of the books here. It wouldn’t do any good to finish cleaning before then. So he held himself back a bit. He thought of more things he could do, fussy little things, like labeling the potion ingredients and alphabetizing the books. He took on a pile of mending when he found a basket of clothes with slight tears in them, which Sirius admitted he couldn’t fix properly even with magic. He even took breaks to sit in the sunshine at Porthaven, always with a book.

He wasn’t just looking for books about werewolves and transformations. He was now even more invested than before in the idea of learning how to brew Healing potions. Of course, that seemed to be the one recipe he couldn’t find in any book.


	3. In Which Sirius Takes Remus' Advice, but Not in the Desired Way, and Another Potion Is Brewed

**Day Ten**

 

After a little more than a week of being startled awake by the movement of the castle, Remus started to wake on his own before it happened. One morning, he pushed open the door to the bathroom to find Sirius already in there.

“Oh, sorry!” he said, but Sirius waved him in.

“It’s no problem. I’m just about to shave. Join me if you want.” He gestured at the shaving kit in Remus’ own hand.

It was hard not to be aware of Sirius in such a small room, even though he had moved over to make space. He was just so large. Remus arranged his supplies on the other side of the sink to give them both as much room as possible and tried to ignore the feeling that Sirius was looming over him. He lathered his face and had only made a few strokes with his razor when he saw in the mirror that Sirius was watching him. Their eyes flicked together for an instant, and one side of Sirius’ mouth curved up in a smile.

Remus had scars, plenty of them, but nowhere near as many as he might have. There was a long one on his neck, and a few smaller ones on his face, but they were not so dramatic on his dark skin that he could assume they were the reason for Sirius’ attention. The less common explanation actually seemed more likely. Sirius found him attractive.

Remus considered this. It had been a long time since he had been intimate with anyone. Sirius hadn’t raised any of the usual red flags, and if things went wrong there were four escape routes to choose from, thanks to the enchanted doors and windows. It wasn’t a hard decision.

So he slowed down his shaving, just a bit, not enough to be lewd, but enough to let Sirius know he didn’t mind the attention. He didn’t check again to see how much Sirius was watching, but he didn’t need to. He could feel Sirius’ eyes on him. And Sirius was distracted enough that Remus finished shaving first, despite his deliberate pace.

He rinsed his face, but instead of leaving the bathroom he leaned his hip against the sink. Sirius had at least a third of his face left to go.

“My turn,” Remus said brightly.

"To what?”

“Watch.”

Sirius laughed, surprised, dislodging a few drops of shaving foam. Remus grinned. He wasn’t one for subtlety. It was better to have these things out in the open, and skip the part where everyone was wondering if the other person was interested. No one liked that part anyways.

“I guess that’s fair,” Sirius said. He rinsed his razor in the basin and continued.

Remus had never found shaving particularly erotic, but it was still aesthetically pleasing to watch Sirius’ razor as it slowly revealed more and more of his skin. Satisfying. 

It was even more satisfying to finally have permission to really _look_. Remus had been forcing his eyes to brush quickly over Sirius all week, when they would have much preferred to linger. Sirius’ skin was as pale as the pearls Remus had gone diving for as a child, with the same odd grayish blue luster. His hair was nearly as light. It hung straight down, draping against his head like wet linen even when dry. It looked very soft. Remus’ fine corkscrew curls were soft too, but in the way that a down pillow was soft, while Sirius’ hair looked like it would slip though someone’s fingers like cold water. His nose, mouth and other features were small and narrow for his face. Where Remus had grown up, Sirius’ pale skin and hair would have been considered exotic, but he had learned over the years that there was no such thing. There was just an expectation for how people would look in each place, and as many preferences for appearance as there were appearances.

Sirius’ body was rather like the castle he lived in, oddly top heavy. His shoulders were half again as broad as Remus’ and heavily muscled, while his legs were disproportionately long and thin. The style of clothing he wore—patterned square coats and plain straight trousers—only accentuated this. Yet Remus found the overall look suited him, and he had gathered it was also quite fashionable here.

More important than all of these things was Sirius’ attitude. His patience with Tonks’ emotional outbursts and constant clumsiness was reassuring. It meant he was probably not the type of man to turn violent unexpectedly. And Remus knew from experience that relationships seldom took that turn during the first few weeks anyways, and a few weeks was the longest this one could possibly last, thanks to his curse. Sirius’ hands were steady with the razor, and his eyes met Remus’ easily between strokes. He did not mind being observed. Remus judged that he had the right combination of confidence and patience to be an interesting lover.

Remus had never had a type, aside from the general category of “men.” He didn’t have the luxury of being picky with his partners’ looks in addition to their gender and personality. But even were he to be choosy about it, he would easily have chosen Sirius.

Remus had plenty of time to observe Sirius up close, as Sirius’ routine was much more complicated than his own. Once he had finished shaving, there were many steps to follow, each of which involved a jar of cream, eye powder, or styling product. Remus watched all this unnecessary primping with some amusement, but it was hard to argue with the final effect.

“Well?” Sirius asked, once he had finished. “Did I miss anywhere?”

Remus made a show of checking, leaning in a bit more than necessary. “Looks good to me.”

“Thanks. You’re so helpful.” Remus was happy to hear a note of flirting in his voice. 

“Any time.” Remus paused, letting the silence stretch to see if Sirius would fill it with any more encouraging words or actions. When neither seemed forthcoming, Remus decided to play at aloofness for a bit. “Breakfast?”

He sauntered out towards the stairs with Sirius close on his heels but then stopped halfway down the stairs on the landing, surprised to find himself suddenly alone. Looking back, he found Sirius still at the top of the stairs, looking oddly hesitant.

“What, aren’t you coming down?”

“Yes, I’m just…” Sirius’ feet shuffled slightly. His hand gripped the railing. “Give me a second.”

Remus stared and then burst out laughing. “This is a dog thing isn’t it? You’re afraid to go down stairs!”

“I am _not_ ,” Sirius insisted primly, “It just takes some thinking when I’ve been a dog all night, that’s all. Four legs to two legs, you know.”

“Why do you even have stairs then? You built this house, right? It’s full of stairs!”

“I figured it’s good to push myself out of my comfort zone.” He tossed his head, slightly doglike in his manner but still beautiful.

“Come on, boy!” Remus said, clapping his hands in mocking encouragement. “You can do it!”

“Oh, you’re funny.” It was supposed to be sarcastic, but Remus could see Sirius was hiding a smile. And he did come down the stairs. Remus saw a shadow of the dog’s reckless, front-heavy gait and laughed again.

Now there were both on the tiny landing above the living area, which meant that Sirius was taking up most of the landing, and Remus had barely enough room to stand. But after the exchange in the bathroom, this seems like more of an opportunity than a problem. Remus lingered, leaning casually against the wall. Sirius read this cue flawlessly. He moved ever so slightly closer.

“And how about you, Remus? Is the castle pushing you out of your comfort zone as well?”

“I think…” Remus drifted away from the wall, matching Sirius’ movement willingly. “...you would find that is very difficult to do.” He cursed the height difference that made it hard to make the first move himself. He let his eyes linger on Sirius’ lips, which had already parted invitingly. If Sirius would just lean down a bit more…

Sirius did lean down, but then he froze. His head moved slightly, breaking eye contact, as if he had heard something. But there was nothing to hear, or Remus would surely have heard it as well. To his confusion, Sirius stepped backward and continued down the stairs as if nothing had happened.

“Do you want some tea?” he asked.

“Tea. Sure.” Remus followed him down the stairs, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. He had made his intent clear. And Sirius had seemed very willing until suddenly…he wasn’t. It didn’t make sense. Perhaps he has mistaken Sirius’ interest, but it had seemed so genuine. Something else must have gotten in the way.

+++

Not something, Remus realized, a few hours later. Someone.

Shortly after breakfast, Sirius officially opened the shop for the first time since Remus had arrived. The first customer was a woman with brown, ribboned curls piled high on her head. Remus was surprised to see Sirius show her the same kind of interest he had shown Remus. He leaned in close, under the pretense of explaining the effectiveness of a certain potion. The woman returned his flirtatious looks eagerly, and by the time she had made her purchase he had touched her arm lingeringly several times and even slid his hand along her waist.

Not that Remus was watching—he was washing up the breakfast dishes—but it was hard not to notice when they were in the same room, and Sirius was not trying to be discreet at all. It was far more intimacy than there had been in that brief moment on the stairs, and made him wonder if he had misinterpreted Sirius’ preferences after all. Perhaps flirtatiousness was simply his personality, but if that were so, why hadn’t there been any evidence of that during the previous week?

The shop was busy all day, and Sirius’ behavior was the same towards all the other customers that came in, who were almost exclusively women. It occurred to Remus that they could be coming for the company rather than the potions. But as he listened in (he had decided it was an excellent day to clean the living area), he got a sense of the type of potions they were buying. Contraceptives. Muscle relaxants and various other potions for women’s comfort. Sirius even sold a wide variety of what Remus could only call beauty products: hair removers, moisturizers, makeup, and hair dye. All of which went a long way towards explaining Sirius’ own distractingly immaculate appearance.

After a little while of this, Remus was more confused by the sheer _number_ of people Sirius was interested in than the gender. He had visited a few places where it was common to be intimate with multiple people, but Ingary did not seem to be one of them from what Remus had observed in Marsh Folding. Partnerships involving people of the same gender weren’t too rare, as evidenced by the free manner the burly innkeeper had shown towards her wife, but they did all seem to be monogamous. However, everywhere Remus went, there were a few people striving to break out of whatever mold their society had created. Perhaps Sirius was one of them. Remus shrugged it off and went on tidying.

Tonks was not nearly so generous about Sirius’ behavior. She spent most of the day scowling, which looked more formidable than usual as she was disguised as Wizard Jenkins. Apparently Tonks and Sirius switched their roles under the public eye to give Tonks practice in her trade and dealing with customers. He was playing the part of apprentice, but she did not rise to the occasion as the Wizard. Instead she slumped on the purple couch, facing away from everyone that came in.

“You seem out of sorts,” Remus observed. He was fishing under the couch for books and other odds and ends.

“I hate it when he does this,” Tonks muttered.

“You mean...with the women?” he asked. He pulled out a book and carefully dusted it. _The Numbered Veil: Arithmancy Revisited._ Probably not useful. He set it in the pile next to him. There really were an obscene number of books in this room, and they seemed to be multiplying. He would probably have to get Sirius to make more shelves. At this rate, they would be lining the room with them.

“It’s bad for the shop! First he gets all lovey-dovey and gross. He spends a few nights with them, then they show up here all weepy and sad because he’s found someone else! And once he turns them away, _they don’t come back._ ” She raised her voice at the end of her sentence, glaring pointedly over her shoulder. Sirius’ turned his head a bit as if he had heard, but he did not remove his hand from the woman’s hip. His charming smile never faltered.

“Ugh!” Tonks flopped back down onto the couch. Her temporarily bushy gray eyebrows drew together until they touched in the center. “Plus, it’s just disgusting.”

Remus glanced over at Sirius, observing the way his blonde hair fell just so, providing a coy cover at precisely the right moments. They weren’t even pretending to talk about merchandise any more, as far as Remus could tell. He wouldn’t have called it disgusting himself. Effective? Definitely.

“I suppose he leads them on? Promises more than he can give?” he asked quietly.

“I guess,” she grumbled.

“Not too fair to the women.”

“Men too.” She rolled her eyes. “ _Everyone._ ”

Remus raised his eyebrows, suspicions confirmed.

“He’ll spend the night with one of them, you’ll see.” She leaned her face on her elbows glumly.

It all happened just as she said. That evening Sirius went out with one of the woman who had come into the shop in the morning. He didn’t come back until late in the night, and Remus could tell from the smell of sex that he hadn’t just been on an extended evening stroll. The flirtatious behavior continued throughout the next day as well, until even Remus began to tire of it, as aesthetically appealing as it was to watch.

The truly frustrating thing was, Sirius seemed determined to flirt with every adult within range _except_ for Remus. The wizard was suddenly oblivious to every clear hint Remus sent him throughout the day. It was strange after being so in tune with each other the morning before. He would, frankly, have loved to go on an evening “walk” that left one with that kind of postcoital spring in one’s step.

That evening he observed another exception to Sirius’ pattern when a herbalist visited the shop to resupply dwindling potion ingredients. Sirius was friendly with her, and that was all. He spent nearly two hours haggling over prices and chatting with her while transferring his purchases to the many empty jars lining the shelves of the work area. But he did not play eye games or try to touch her.

By the time she left, Tonks had gone to bed and even Remus was stretched out in his bunk under the stairs, reading. Sirius put the last jar of herbs on the shelf and sank into his armchair.

“So what’s different about her?” Remus asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t flirt with her. That’s the first woman to come through that door that you’ve you left alone.”

“Miranda doesn’t want to be flirted with. Not by me or anyone else as far as I can see.” Sirius yawned and pulled a book out from under his chair. Remus shook his head. He was sure he had cleaned all the books out from under the furniture earlier.

“Good at picking up on that kind of thing are you?” Remus raised his eyebrows.

“Yes.” Sirius turned the page of his book nonchalantly without even looking up. Remus rolled his eyes, nettled by Sirius’ continued pretense of obliviousness.

“Tonks doesn’t like it,” Remus said.

“No. She doesn’t.” Another page turned. “But it’s not true that it drives the customers away. The ones that don’t come back send their servants or their friends. There are only three wizards in Kingsbury that sell the kind of things I do, and we have the market cornered in Porthaven. But she still hates it. I think it’s a bit like seeing your parents kiss, you know?”

Remus didn’t know. In Lonuma’ugo, his native country, men and women lived, slept, and ate separately. Remus had never seen his parents being intimate with each other—although obviously it had happened at least a few times, judging by the presence of himself and his siblings—and he doubted anyone else had either.

“So we made a deal,” Sirius continued. “I do what I like, but no one stays at the house. It’s pretty fair, I think.”

“Tonks said men too.”

“That is correct.” Another page turned.

“But I don’t see many men coming through that door.”

Sirius sighed deeply. His hand rested delicately above his eyes. “The war has been going on for years. There aren’t many men left.”

“Oh.”

They were silent for a while, but neither seemed very attentive to their reading anymore.

“I’m done for the day,” Sirius said quietly. He left his book open facedown on the arm of his chair.

“Goodnight,” Remus said. He glanced over at the book. He couldn’t tell what it was from here. Once Sirius went upstairs he would investigate. But Sirius lingered at the base of the stairs, near the foot of Remus’ bunk.

“It doesn’t really...mean anything.” Sirius was watching him intently, perhaps even a little desperately.

Remus closed his book in irritation. Was that supposed to be some kind of excuse? He was not so prudish to judge Sirius simply for having one night stands. That was how his own sex life often went too. Remus had left behind many well-satisfied gentlemen. Sirius, on the other hand, was leaving a string of broken hearts. Remus was not inclined to validate that behavior.

“You can’t possibly be this clueless! What about all the women who are so upset they have to send their friends in their place? Is it meaningless to them? Do you tell them you just want a fun evening? Or do you tell them you want to see what their eyes look like in the starlight?”

Sirius lowered his eyes. His fingers picked restlessly at a rough patch of wood on the stair railing. “You have good hearing.”

“You’re not that quiet! And if you _are_ one of the only young men left around here...well what do you think they expect?”

Sirius covered his face with his hand. “I—I can’t give those women what they expect. Or the men for that matter.”

“Why?”

Sirius opened and closed his mouth several times. His hand gripped the banister tightly now, as if it was holding him up.

“This is all I know how do.” His eyes closed, perhaps from the effort of speaking. He took a deep breath and added quietly, almost to himself, “What else _can_ I do?”

Remus snorted and waved off what he assumed was a rhetorical question. But Sirius stayed where he was, and there was no sarcastic challenge in his eyes. Remus swallowed. “Are you really...asking for advice?”

Sirius didn’t respond, but every part of him seemed to be listening, oriented towards Remus like a dog waiting for his cue. His unadulterated attention was a bit intense.

“All right then. Advice.” Remus tilted his head thoughtfully. “Leave off with the inexperienced women. Stop breaking hearts. Have as much fun as you want, but have it with someone who knows how to keep their heart safe.”

He let his arms fold casually over his bent legs, keeping his body language open enough that Sirius could understand at least one way to follow through with this idea. So Sirius wanted casual sex, no strings attached? Perfect. Remus would be gone in a few weeks anyways.

Sirius nodded slowly as if this were sage wisdom instead of just common sense, but he didn’t respond to Remus’ invitation at all. Instead, he unwrapped his hands from the banister and turned away. Remus sighed and slid back down onto the bed, listening to the creak of the stairs as Sirius went up and trying to parse the strange combination of supposed carelessness and what had appeared to be genuine distress.

Perhaps Sirius used to have more male lovers, who had been killed in the war. He might not like to be reminded. It may even have happened recently, with one man in particular that he truly cared for. Grief, deeply hidden for Tonks’ sake, would definitely explain Sirius’ odd behavior. If that were the case, Remus’ continued attempts at flirting could be causing unnecessary pain. Tonks seemed to assume Sirius never got attached, but she couldn’t know everything. Remus found it easier to believe that Sirius was heartbroken, rather than heartless.

After letting these thoughts wind around in his head for a good thirty minutes, he shook himself and rolled over to sleep. Since when was he the type to chase after someone like this anyways? He wasn’t _that_ desperate to get laid. Something would happen or it wouldn’t. There was no use worrying about it.

+++

Nothing did happen, but strangely Sirius did seem to follow the rest of Remus’ advice. The next day he was much more subdued in his interactions with customers. He still flirted, but it was in a more general way, as if he didn’t want to throw off clientele who by now all expected to be charmed. He didn’t touch them. He didn’t arrange any more nights out. Instead he spent his evenings as he had before the shop opened, preparing inventory and reading.

Tonks seemed greatly soothed by this shift. Wizards Pendragon and Jenkins began to actually participate in the running of the shop, and in the evenings she listened enthusiastically to Sirius as he talked about whatever potion he was currently making.

Remus did not quite trust this sudden change in Sirius’ behavior. A few words from a near stranger should not be enough to cause that kind of shift. Was Sirius playing some sort of long game with him? Why would he, when Remus had made it quite clear they could skip the game and enjoy the end goal?

Perhaps he had simply decided to humor Tonks. He did seem quite devoted to her, in a brotherly way. But Remus could not shake the feeling that there was some other reason. The puzzle of it ate at him, but he did his best to put it aside. Let Sirius do what he wanted. Remus was better off without the distraction of an entanglement. He had work to do.

+++

“Mrs. Gullison is coming tomorrow,” Tonks told Sirius.

Sirius glanced up at the shelf of ready-made potions in the manner of one checking the time. Remus looked up too, checking the bottle that had held the Healing potion. It was empty, as it had been ever since Sirius had returned. He must have been injured when he had come home, as Tonks had feared, because the last dose had disappeared around the time he had arrived. Remus had been waiting for them to brew more so that he might learn where the recipe was kept. After days of unceasing preparations, the shelves were full of potions ready to be sold, but the bottle for the Healing potion remained empty.

“Then we better get to work,” Sirius said.

“Who is Mrs. Gullison?” Remus cleared the dishes from the table and took them to the kitchen area.

“She does our laundry,” Sirius said. “Could do yours too if you like.”

“I can wash my own clothes, thank you.” Remus shook his head. Sirius and Tonks didn’t cook and they didn’t clean; of course they didn’t do their own laundry. They couldn’t really take care of themselves at all. He wondered what kind of house Sirius have been raised in, that he didn’t know how to clean a floor or wash a dish.

It was too bad, really. The kitchen was a pleasant place now that Remus had cleaned it. The sink and counter were finished with cheery white and blue tiles, which he had scrubbed until even the grout between them looked new. The tiles spread up the wall, creating a backsplash and a curving frame for the window. Remus enjoyed the view of the Porthaven harbor, and did not mind doing the washing up. He never had much to do since Sirius and Tonks still preferred to stockpile dirty dishes instead of have them cleaned, although he had insisted on at least rinsing the dishes for hygiene’s sake. After that was done he stacked them neatly on the floor next to the counter. The pile grew to the height of his knees as he added the breakfast plates.

“Right, that’s all I think.” Sirius deposited a heavy canvas bag near the door, then pulled open the drawstring so Tonks could shove in a few more items. Remus dried his hands on the dishcloth and tossed it to Sirius to add to the bag. Sirius cinched it tight and spoke quietly to Tonks, who pulled a stool over to the workshop area. To Remus’ hastily concealed excitement, she reached onto the highest shelf for the thin bottle that had held the Healing potion.

There was a particular kettle, coated with layers of bacon grease and soot, that had proved stubbornly difficult to clean properly. Remus had been saving it for exactly this occasion. He took it and a few rags over to the workbench, hoping his attitude of passing interest in potion making, carefully cultivated over the last week, would help obscure his intense interest in this particular potion.

“What are you making today?” He removed the kettle’s lid and peered inside, as if it was more interesting than the ingredients Sirius and Tonks were arranging on the workbench.

“Healing potion,” Tonks said.

“Oh, I see.” Remus scrubbed the knob of the kettle’s lid. “Is that a very difficult one?”

“Oh no, it’s easy,” she said proudly. “But it takes forever, and you can’t stop stirring, or it doesn’t work.”

“Healing potions are a restricted substance,” Sirius said. “Only wizards registered with the Apothecary Guild can brew them.”

“Sirius is registered. I’m not yet,” she added, “but I know how to do it.”

“Tonks told me you had some? Twisted ankle?” Sirius placed a squat black cauldron on the workbench.

“Yes.” Remus hesitated. He wasn’t sure how much she had told him. He didn’t want to draw attention to his injuries or the fact that he had arrived pursued by an angry mob. “It was very effective.”

“I’ve updated the standard recipe somewhat.”

“Sirius makes the best healing potions in Ingary!” Tonks said loyally. The corners of Sirius’ mouth turned up slightly.

“I didn’t realize Healing potions are addictive,” Remus said.

“They’re not.” The shadow of a smile vanished from Sirius’ face. “The Parliament of Healers restricts their use to keep themselves from going out of business. They make apothecaries charge extravagant amounts even though the ingredients are inexpensive. Hardly anyone in town can even afford the potion I make. And they can’t afford the Healers’ rates either, so more often than not they end up bandaging themselves up and hoping for the best.”

Remus gaped at him in indignation. He was very familiar with bandaging himself up and hoping for the best. “But that—don’t people try to sell it illegally? They must!”

“Hardly. You need to show your license to buy the athelas—thats one of the active ingredients, and it doesn’t grow wild—and the vendors check your magical signature every time. Even the recipe is a guild secret.”

The kettle and cleaning rag lay forgotten in Remus’ hands. If what Sirius was saying was true, then it had only ever been bureaucracy keeping Remus in a state of persistent pain for half his life, not scarcity of ingredients or the required skill to brew the potion. And the price had been ludicrously high everywhere, in all the places he had been, not just in Ingary. That meant dozens of different governing bodies had all decided the same thing, to put the vanity and profits of Healers before people’s need to be healed. It was unbelievable.

“People could die!” he protested.

“They do die. All the time.” Sirius sighed and pulled out a few spoons and the scale they used to measure ingredients. “Tonks, if you think it’s so easy to make, you can do it, and explain it all to me as you go.”

Remus quickly went back to scrubbing the kettle, hoping Sirius wouldn’t ask him to leave the workbench to preserve the secret of the recipe. Now he knew he would never find it in one of the books, which made this eavesdropping even more important. Sirius did not ask him to leave. Remus did his best to hide his interest as Tonks prepared the potion, while committing to memory which ingredients she measured out. It helped that Sirius quizzed her along the way, asking her to describe each step and why it must be done so.

Compared to the Strengthening potion, it was a simple recipe. There were only a half dozen ingredients. Once all had been added, Tonks and Sirius took turns stirring the potion for the next twelve hours, one attending to customers while the other moved the hardwood spoon in a slow, hypnotic pattern: clockwise four turns, counterclockwise four turns, over and over. The customers watched cautiously, but the honey-like smell of the potion was soothing. Many sales were made, even when Sirius was the one stirring and the customers had to deal with the less charming Wizard Jenkins.

As soon as he had a chance, Remus snuck into the bathroom with paper and ink and wrote down the recipe before it could leave his mind. He squinted at it as the ink dried. It was probably correct. It would be taking a huge risk to try to brew the potion himself without making a mistake, but he didn’t exactly have a low-risk lifestyle. Tonks had said the potion could last for several months without being consumed, but the batches had to be small, only a few doses each—the reason was something to do with temperature and mass. With a day’s work every few months Remus could dose himself after each full moon.

Now he knew that getting the recipe had only been part of the challenge. It wouldn’t be easy to acquire the athelas without a license. Remus bit his lip, thinking of the large packet of it he now knew was stored in a drawer of the potion cabinet. Tonks had only put in four teaspoonfuls, and the bag was as large as Remus’ spread hand. It would last a long time, maybe even a lifetime. Especially if his lifetime was not all that long.

It had been a long time since he had stolen anything. Many years ago, when he had first left Lonuma’ugo, he had wandered for months in the hills to the north, living off familiar purple root vegetables and fishing from streams. Fruit was plentiful. If it had not been for the manner of his leaving, he might have enjoyed himself. Every month he traveled a little further east, until one morning he woke from a full moon to discover the wolf had climbed over the high mountain pass that had loomed in the far distance throughout his childhood, which served as the border to Lonuma’ugo, leaving him in an environment that was completely new. The streams were dry, the fruit trees were scarce, and he saw no sign of the sweet, dark-fleshed potatoes he had grown up on. He had not been much of a hunter then. He knew how to make a spear, but killing a rodent or a hog was much harder than spearing a fish. The weather turned cold, as it rarely did on his side of the mountain. The leaves fell from all but the bristly pine trees and he shivered in clothes made for hot, humid shores.

All traces of his robust childhood disappeared quickly, and he was weak with hunger when he saw the first town since his own. It was on the banks of a river that had given him a few fish. The river had been diverted from its natural course, and upon investigation he learned that it was being used to power a textiles factory, where silk was being woven and assembled into clothing.

He had gratefully scavenged for food in the rubbish heap outside. That night he broke into the rarely used attics of the factory and slept warmly for the first time in weeks in a nest of discarded silk fibers and wool batting. He woke early the next morning to the unearthly rumble of thunder that never ceased. Cautiously peering down showed him the machines below, and he began to understand the work being done. He knew he needed money to survive in the world outside Lonuma’ugo. He needed skills. He was already hungry again, and that was a very motivating force. He lay on the floor of the attic, peering down at the factory through the cracks in the floorboards, and made a plan.

He spent the next week watching dark-haired heads bent over their work. He tried to live off rubbish and the few fish in the river, but there was just not enough. He ended up stealing the occasional steamed bun or bundle of rice wrapped in seaweed to survive. At the end of the week he crept downstairs under the cover of darkness. He took the shabbiest fabric he could find from the back of the storeroom. The sewing machines had been disconnected from the water wheel that supplied their power, so he had to take a needle and sew by hand. It was several days of work, which he did hidden away in the attic. The completed outfit of loose trousers and thigh length tunic was not quite right, but that suited his purpose. He took it to the river and ground the clothing thin between stones. He tore holes in believable places and carefully patched them. Then he rubbed it with dirt and washed it until it looked like it had been worn for many seasons.

He would have liked to simply walk in like he belonged there, but his physical appearance marked him apart. The people of that region were varied in skin tone, but his tightly curled hair, which he had long since freed from its braids, couldn’t be more different from theirs, which was sleek black and brown. There were some people that looked like him, but not enough. So he found the person in charge and respectfully asked to work. He said he had run away from another village, and that he knew how to use the machines, which was only partly true. He had learned as much as possible by watching, but there were still a few awkward mistakes in the beginning.

It was a miserable job. It paid barely enough for his food. He wouldn’t have been able to afford to sleep anywhere other than the attic even if he had wanted to. But he learned to cut fabric quickly, to use the machines, and to follow the patterns accurately. In the spring he stole some slightly nicer material and made himself a slightly nicer set of clothing. He left the factory and went to the shop of an overworked tailor. He said he had been turned out from an apprenticeship in the next village, and demonstrated his newly acquired skills.

He worked there for two seasons, trying to absorb all he could from the position of assistant. Then he walked to a larger town and repeated the process, each time exchanging whatever he had earned for just enough fabric to make him an outfit that implied a slightly rosier past than the one before it.

He couldn’t stay anywhere very long. The moon made sure of that. He was forced to spend at least a week away every month, traveling into the wilds beyond the towns, far enough away that the wolf couldn’t find human prey. These long absences were not a habit many tailors tolerated, and he counted himself lucky if he could stay in one place for even a few months. Even with this flaw, his plan proved to be a good one, and within a few years he had enough skill to find work without too much difficulty.

It wasn’t until eight years later, when he turned twenty, that he realized that not only had he become good at the work, he had learned to love it. He traveled quite a bit, to keep people from connecting the dots between his absences in the cities and the reports of a werewolf in the countrysides. People spoke many different languages and had many different customs, but they all wore clothes, and when you got down to it all clothing was just pieces of fabric cut and arranged in endless variations. It only took some creative thinking to puzzle it out and reproduce the designs. These spatial challenges intrigued him, and there was much satisfaction in seeing his plans become reality in the form of a new garment. Especially if that garment could be sold for a decent price.

So he had managed to continue his semi-nomadic life with no need to return to thieving, but now the prospect of a Healing potion made him consider it again. If the suppliers did indeed check magical signatures before selling athelas, there was no chance of him being able to buy it legitimately, even if he made a career change and took up potion-making. He was sure his own magical signature would clearly shout “werewolf!” to anyone who cared to check it.

There might be consequences for Sirius if he had to account to his suppliers for the sudden disappearance of a large bag of this restricted ingredient. But Remus wasn’t sure he could see an alternative, at least not yet. His resolve was further weakened that afternoon when he observed Sirius sneaking a dose of Healing potion into Mrs. Gullison’s tea when she came for a chat before picking up the laundry. Sirius saw he had noticed and explained in an undertone that Mrs. Gullison had an arthritic disease. The potion could not cure, but it managed the symptoms. It was the best she could hope for, unless she suddenly became wealthy enough to afford a long series of visits to a Healer. Remus wondered how many others had been recipients of clandestine doses of Sirius’ potion, and what the consequences would be if he jeopardized it through theft.

Shortly after Mrs. Gullison left, carrying the laundry with a definite spring in her step, a message arrived for Sirius. He opened it and read it silently, face expressionless to Remus’ eyes. He passed it to Tonks, who read it with equal somberness. Sirius shook his head and left the house. He was gone for a few hours, and in the meantime, Tonks cleared the workshop table completely, even removing the various bottles and books that always piled up at one end. She was generally unresponsive to Remus’ curious probing, and after a while he gave up and went out to the Porthaven market to buy food for their dinner.

When he returned, he nearly dropped his market baskets at the top of the stairs in shock. There was a body laid out on the workbench. It was female, which was obvious since it was completely naked. Equally obviously, it was dead. Sirius and Tonks hovered over it, peering at it through an instrument Sirius wore. It seemed to be composed of four rings, two on each hand, with a red string connecting them in a loop.

“What…what are you _doing?_ ” Remus asked, unable to keep the horror out of his voice.

Sirius looked up at him. He managed to give the impression of a man frowning over his glasses disapprovingly, even though he wore none.

“Tonks must study anatomy to improve her ability to change her form,” he said. Tonks shifted a bit uncomfortably, but she wasn’t too squeamish to lean forward from her perch on the stool and look. Remus could see the interior structures of the dead woman’s throat through the rectangle formed by the red string.

“That’s horrible! Can’t you look at a living body?”

“We will also prepare the body for burial, as no one would have been able to do for this woman if I hadn’t been contacted,” Sirius said quietly. “And Tonks’ ability is a secret, as I hope you will remember.”

“Still…” Remus searched for a logical reason to support his irrational fear of the body. He stepped closer despite himself, but then immediately backed away as he caught the faint odor of old blood and death wafting off it. The smell was too familiar. His stomach turned.

“It smells. Surely it hasn’t been dead long enough to smell that bad!” he added forcefully.

“She doesn’t smell so much. For a dead person.” Tonks took the instrument from Sirius’ hands and held it over the body’s face. Remus recoiled from the view.

“She doesn’t smell so much _anymore,_ ” Sirius said with great irritation. “Remus, if you want to help prepare the body, just say so. Otherwise, please don’t interfere.”

“I’m not interfering!” He huffed to cover his shudder as he backed away to the stove and sink on the other side of the room. The smell was much less noticeable over here. He improved the room’s aroma further by using as much garlic and cardamon in the his cooking as possible.

By the time dinner was ready, Tonks had finished examining the body and had started practicing various voices, which seemed to have been the primary topic of their study. Remus had to admit it was a useful skill, and he could imagine it must be difficult for her to transform her voice without models to imitate. Sirius allowed her to examine his own throat with the instrument too, and she took great delight in imitating his voice all throughout dinner.

“Is this how you learn everything? By looking at bodies?” Remus asked over the curry, with some attempt at tolerance.

“Oh, no, I learn a lot just by looking at people when they’re alive. But alive people don’t usually like you looking at their insides, or…well, under their clothes. I go to the bathhouse sometimes, that helps, but this is easier to see up close.” She gestured to the now shrouded body on the workbench.

None of them were eager to eat gathered around a corpse, so they had sat down in the room’s little living area. Remus had quickly claimed the purple couch, which he and Tonks always seemed to be in competition for. She had rolled her eyes and sat down on the floor opposite, as if she were too dignified to play his games. Sirius sat in his armchair, and the last armchair remained empty. It really was an uncomfortable thing, with springs poking at awkward angles. Remus wasn’t surprised Tonks had chosen the floor when robbed of her purple throne of choice.

She sat now scooted up to the low table with her bowl mere inches below her mouth, which allowed her to eat very rapidly with only minimal mess. The fire was behind her, and only dimming sunlight from the windows lit her face.

“What do you really look like?” Remus asked her.

“What do you mean?” She scowled mulishly. “This _is_ how I really look.”

“Obviously it isn’t,” Remus persisted. “No one is born with pink hair.”

“So? That doesn’t mean it’s not _real._ ” She shook her head vigorously, making her hair flutter out of its loose bun. “See? Real.”

“Leave her alone,” Sirius said. “If she says that’s how she really looks, then that’s how she really looks.”

Remus rolled his eyes at this overprotectiveness. “It’s not an insult, I was just curious,” he muttered.

Tonks threw her spoon down into her bowl, splattering food. She slapped her hands down on either side of it and leaned forward, staring at Remus with alarming intensity but saying nothing. Remus shifted uncomfortably under the force of her glare, trying not to be intimidated by a twelve year-old. He glanced at Sirius uncertainly, but the wizard just shrugged, obviously content to let this play out.

When Remus looked back to Tonks he jumped in his seat, bowl and spoon clattering in his hands. He cursed in his birth language, which he had not done in a long time, but no one could even have heard it over the huge explosion of laughter from Sirius.

The face Tonks wore now was Remus’ own. Every detail was perfect, except for the wide, maniacal grin that she wore. Remus was sure _he_ never did that with his face.

“The truth is,” she said in a passable imitation of Remus’ voice, “ _this_ is how I really look.”

Sirius was doubled over now with laughter so forceful it was nearly silent. Although he still managed to gasp out some suggestions to improve the vocal imitation.

“Like this?” Tonks asked, her voice now altered to match Remus’ even more closely.

“Almost, yes, oh gods!” Sirius clutched his side and gasped for breath. “Sorry Remus, but you should have seen your face-faces!”

His own terrible joke set him off again. Remus took a deep breath, casting off the residual effects of the shock.

“My voice doesn’t sound like that at all, I’m sure,” he managed.

“It sounds different outside your own head—,” Sirius started to explain.

“I’m sure I could do it better!” Tonks interrupted, putting an expression of childish excitement on Remus’ copied face. “Please let me look, Remus, please!”

She leaned forward over the table and he shied backwards.

“At my throat? No way! You’re not coming anywhere near me with that thing!” Even remembering the view through the magical medical instrument sent a chill down his spine.

“ _Please?_ ” she insisted. As she spoke she changed again, and Remus was watching this time. Her skin lightened and her features stretched in a quite disturbing way, bits of herself moving around to add and subtract mass. To Remus’ dismay, the face she wore when she was done was still not her own. It was Sirius’.

“Oh _please,_ Remus, please let me look,” she crooned, in a perfect imitation of Sirius’ voice.

“That...is so disturbing,” Remus said.

Sirius swept his own coat off his shoulders and hung it over hers, which had grown to approximate his body shape. This only made him laugh more, and Tonks preened, clearly pleased with her success at entertaining him.

“You’re crazy, both of you!” Remus shook his head in disbelief. He could see that under the coffee table the lower half of Tonks’ body was emaciated and shriveled. Nearly all of her mass had been needed to widen her shoulders to Sirius’ breadth.

Sirius sat up with an effort, clinging to the side of the wingback chair. He wiped at the corners of his eyes, which were dry despite his great mirth. He breathlessly waved Tonks away from Remus. She smiled smugly and sat down on the floor. Her face changed back into her own.

“All right,” she said, voice cracking. She cleared her throat, frowned in concentration, then tried again. “All right, you don’t have to show me if you don’t want to. But I _will_ figure it out!”

“If you say so.” He waved his hands in defeat. He had no pretensions about trying to control anything she did. She was as wild as a monkey tumbling through the trees, and Sirius was obviously in the habit of letting her do just as she pleased.


	4. In Which They Reach the Blue Waste

**Day Thirteen**

 

“We’re here!” Sirius sailed through the living room, beckoning to Remus and a still-groggy Tonks. “Come see the Blue Waste! It’s a nice view, but we have to walk.”

He turned the door to the green dot and stepped out into the misty morning of the Waste, which looked like the same drab grayish moor as usual. But as Remus stepped though the door himself and followed Sirius up the hill waiting outside, he felt his heart sink. He didn’t have to wonder what was on the other side of the hill, he could smell it.

It was an ocean.

Sirius stood at the top of the hill, which plunged down into a cliff just beyond him. Tonks yawned and plopped herself down on the dusty turf beside him.

“An ocean,” Remus said slowly. “The Blue Waste is an ocean.”

“It’s as far east as we go,” Sirius explained, enthusiasm fading slightly in the face of such a lackluster audience. “But I’m not going to abandon you here or anything. I told you, I’ll drop you off wherever you like.”

“A port town maybe…” Remus trailed off. He already knew it was hopeless. He couldn’t see far through the trailing mist, but he didn’t need to see this ocean to know it for what it was. 

He had grown up only a few yards from the ocean. He knew more than the smell of salt water; he knew all the different scents an ocean could bring, depending on its size or its mood. He knew the scent of wet sand, blooms of algae, damp pumice, wispy foam, decaying fish, and fresh seaweed. A wide, flat bay smelled different from a turbulent inlet, and a small inland sea smelled different from a true ocean. This was no inland sea. It was a giant expanse of deceptively smooth dark blue water. It was deep, deep as the tallest sky. “There must be ships that cross it, yes? How long is the journey?”

Sirius mouth tightened slightly, concern over Remus’ reaction shadowing his smile. “It’s a long way. Nine months. Ten.”

Remus swallowed. Ten months. How could that be? He had travelled so far already, how could the world still have room for an ocean so big?

And at the same time it seemed unfair to be so close now to his home, whose shores must be just on the other side of this body of water, and yet he was not ready to return. Nothing had been fixed. He was still cursed with an endless cycle of pain and viciousness. He was an enemy to everyone he had ever known, even himself.

He swallowed. “There must be a way around. Or places to stop on the way? Islands.”

“Don’t you _know_?” Tonks sighed with exasperation, probably ready for Remus to stop sightseeing and go back to making breakfast. “You’re always snooping in books, don’t you look at the maps? It’s just water, all the way across.”

“Do you have to cross it?” Sirius asked quietly.

“I don’t know…” He shook his head, breaking eye contact with the waves rolling far below him. “I’m going for a walk. I need to think.”

He turned sharply and walked away, winding his way through the scrubby gray bushes. He went south. The ocean thrummed with waves to his left and below him. He could feel its spray on his skin, but he couldn’t make himself turn away from it completely, couldn’t make himself go west. It would be like going backwards. He had stopped, he had stalled, and he had given up many times. But he had never turned back before.

He had crossed an ocean once. It had not been nearly so large, but it had still taken two months. He spent five years of savings bribing the captain and crew before they would agree to sail him anywhere. That was the only time he had ever told anyone what he was voluntarily. He shouldn’t have done it, but the urge to run had burned stronger and stronger until he couldn’t stand to dawdle in the sleepy sea town any longer. He had to move forward.

The crew had kept him chained in a specially constructed box made of seasoned wood and thick iron, all arranged at huge expense, and he had timed it so he only had to undergo one transformation. It was one of the most horrifying times of his life, and there were some strong contenders. Feeding him had been part of the arrangement, but the terrified sailors had given him barely enough to survive. After weeks in the dark box, he was half mad before the transformation even began, and afterwards there was no way to treat his wounds, which were always worse when the wolf was confined. It had nearly killed him. He had no hope of surviving a longer journey under those conditions, and what other conditions could he hope for?

But there was nowhere else to go. He wouldn’t go back west. He couldn’t even really imagine it. Ever since he had started moving he had felt this urge to head east and keep going, as far as he could go. He had nowhere to go back to. Of all the places he had visited, had he never found anywhere he had a chance of belonging.

He didn’t need privacy to remember his situation or to reason through these thoughts. They were always with him, only now they loomed high in front of him, higher than any ocean wave. He walked far enough away that no one could see or hear him, and then he sat down at the edge of the wide, wide ocean and cried.

+++

He stayed away until the evening. Sirius came looking for him once as Padfoot, but Remus climbed partway down the cliff to a small overhang where he wouldn’t be noticed. His reaction to the Blue Waste had not been subtle. They would want to know what was wrong. He would have to explain once he came back, and he couldn’t bear to make up a story, not yet. But eventually, he did come back.

Sirius had made a fire near the edge of the cliff, and Tonks was industriously toasting bread and sausages on a stick.

“Are you all right?” Sirius asked, rising when Remus came into view. “You were gone a long time! I was starting to think you’d left.”

“I wouldn’t leave without my things.” Remus sat down heavily on the opposite side of the fire. He felt bleary and depressed, sunk low by the helplessness of his situation.

“What do you want to go across the ocean for anyways?” Tonks asked. She offered him a sausage, but he waved it away, staring into the fire. This was the problem with staying with people, especially children. They were always asking things, and he was getting so tired of lying.

“That’s where I came from,” he said, deciding to settle for small, inconspicuous truths.

“You said you came from Jharm. That’s _that_ way, you know.” She pointed authoritatively towards the lightest part of the twilight sky, away from the broad ocean.

“That depends on your perspective.” Remus shook his head slightly at Tonks’ blank stare. “My country, Lonuma’ugo, is much further west than Jharm, that was just the closest place I thought you would know. I told you, I have been walking for a long time.”

Tonks still looked confused, but Remus didn’t feel like offering more information. Sirius, however, seemed to be putting the pieces together.

“Wait, are you saying you’ve walked all the way _around the world?_ ”

“Almost.” Remus turned his head slightly to indicate the ocean. It was all the movement he could manage. He felt so heavy.

“Really? But that’s amazing!” Tonks bounced with excitement so wildly her toast went into the fire, but she didn’t seem to notice. “You must have seen all kinds of stuff! Did you really walk the whole way?”

Remus nodded. “I stopped sometimes though. Like now. I can tell you about it if you like. Later. I’m tired.”

Tonks sighed, clearly disappointed. “Someday I’m going to see lots of places too. I’m going to go to the museums in Dorimynde and the mountains in Alberia. I’m going to go _everywhere!_ ”

She spread her arms wide and threw her body backwards onto the lumpy heather, looking up at the stars that were coming out by the dozens as the darkness grew. Remus wanted to tell her that wandering was overrated, that there was something to be said for having a place to belong—not that he would really know—but he was distracted by the strange, intense way Sirius was watching her.

“The castle is yours, you know.” Sirius spoke quietly enough that he might have been trying to stop Remus from hearing. “When you’re old enough, or if—if something happens, it’s yours. You can take it anywhere. You should.”

“We should go together,” she said, subdued now. Her fists clenched in the low heather.

Remus wondered if that was what she would have done eventually, if Sirius had not come back from whatever it was he did for the war. How long would she have waited? With the castle and its shop to provide income, she would do far better than he himself had when he had left home.

“How did you make the castle anyways?” Remus asked, hoping to turn the subject towards something less depressing. “Did you transfigure it?”

Sirius nodded. “It took me weeks. I had some experience building vehicles.”

“Really?” Remus frowned. “You know, now that I think of it, I’ve never seen anyone drive or live inside something made with transfiguration. Don’t things sometimes just turn back into whatever they started as?” He has read that in several of Sirius’ books. Transfiguration magic was usually temporary, but even the dishes they had shattered in the plate pit had not turned back into paper.

“Usually things do turn back, yes. But not what I make.”

“Really? Why is that?”

Sirius shrugged, as if he had never thought about it, which was obviously ridiculous.

“It’s because Sirius is the best wizard in the whole world,” Tonks traced a dramatic circle across the sky with her arm as she spoke. “Nothing he makes has ever turned back. Except he can turn into Padfoot and into other things too, and he can change himself back.”

Remus turned back to Sirius. “You can change yourself into other things? Like Tonks?”

Sirius shook his head. “I’m not a metamorphmagus. You have to be born with that ability, and I wasn’t. I learned to be animagus, that’s how I can change into Padfoot and back. That’s easy now. It’s not the same kind of transfiguration magic as the other things I do. I can also transfigure my body into other things in the same way I make the dishes and the castle. But it’s much more difficult, especially changing back. It gets harder every time. ”

“What do you change into?” Remus was really paying attention now. This was not in any of Sirius books on transfiguration, although it helped him understand some of the notes Sirius had written in the margins.

Sirius shifted uncomfortably. “Whatever I need to. Sometimes something stronger. Or something that can fly.”

Remus stared. “You can _fly_?”

“It should be awesome,” Tonks said bitterly, “but it’s not. That’s why he always has to go away. No one else can do it.”

Remus realized he had unintentionally led the conversation back in a circle towards the subject of Sirius leaving and the war. He would have to ask Sirius more about his transfiguration abilities later, outside of Tonks’ hearing. If Sirius really could change things permanently, including people...well that was very interesting. Remus wasn’t sure yet how it could help him, especially if he wasn’t willing to tell Sirius about being a werewolf—which he definitely wasn’t—but it was worth exploring.

For now, he cleared his throat and changed the subject. “So, Tonks, how did you end up living here? If Sirius’ magic isn’t like yours, why not find yourself a metamorphmagus to apprentice to?”

She didn’t answer for a long while, and the way Sirius was scowling now made Remus wonder if this question had crossed the all-important Don’t Disturb Tonks line. He didn’t say anything though, and Tonks was silent for so long that Remus was craning his neck over the fire to see if she had fallen asleep when she finally responded.

“My parents are dead. Sirius let me live with him, and he teaches me.”

Remus had wondered if she was an orphan, or maybe a runaway like himself. In the weeks he had been there, she had never once mentioned her family.

“I’m sorry to hear about your parents. That must have been very difficult for you.” He shook his head, officially giving up on the quest for a conversation topic that wouldn’t upset them all even more. He wasn’t hungry, but he took a piece of bread to keep himself busy, resolving to be quiet for the rest of the evening. He let the bread toast and spread some butter on it from the pot Sirius offered.

“Why did you leave your home?” Sirius asked. “Why walk all that way?”

Remus sighed and put the toast down. He didn’t really want it, although he hadn’t eaten all day. His stomach was still clenched in knots. He thought for a while, remembering the various stories he had told in the past to answer this question. He tried on each lie like hats, hoping one of them would fit and he could repeat it now as an entertaining story. But in the end he just couldn’t make himself do it, in fact he could barely bring himself to lie at all, except by omission.

“When I was twelve, a traveling sorceress came to Lonuma’ugo. She went from village to village trading knowledge. She had this idea that all of us supposedly backwards little villages didn’t know that the world was round, and she had made it her mission to bring us the news, in trade of course. Well, we already knew the world was round. My village is small, less than a hundred people, and we didn’t have a telescope, but we know a lot about the stars. We live right on the ocean, and we use the stars to navigate, just like anyone else.”

Remus leaned back on the cold and slightly damp ground, looking up at those same stars, so he wouldn’t have to look at his audience.

“Anyways, we thought she was a little crazy, but we were polite to her and let her stay and eat with us for a few weeks. She had a crystal as big as a mirror, which she used to show us the world as her science understood it. She showed us our village, the villages nearby, the villages beyond them, farther and farther until it seemed like the world she knew must just go on forever and could never fit on a round globe at all.

“She was a good storyteller. She made it seem like you were getting smaller and smaller.” He paused, not sure how to describe the vertigo-like feeling of realizing how large the world truly was and how insignificant that made any one person. “It made some people uncomfortable. We traded with the villages near us, and they traded with people farther away, and we knew that some of those longest trading journeys could take many months on foot. We even had maps of most of what she showed. But it was just not the same. People were glad when she left. But what she said made an impression on me, and I had it in my mind a few weeks later when I left.”

He stopped there, hoping this would be enough to satisfy them, but of course there was no chance of that.

“You left when you were only twelve? Just to explore?” Tonks asked. Her eyes were wide with admiration, and she was leaning forward over the now-dying fire.

He shook his head. That was how he had set it up in the telling, but now he found he couldn’t tolerate this undeserved hero worship.

“No, that’s not really it. I was just...” He rubbed his hands over his face, trying to find the right half-truth that would most accurately represent the shame and terror of leaving. “I couldn’t get along with my people anymore. I had a problem, and I didn’t know how to fix it. I thought, if the world is so big and full of so many different kinds of people, maybe I would just go, and keep going until I figured out what to do.”

“You ran away,” she said softly. “Did it help?”

The stars above him seemed to grow blurry, and he blinked away the forming tears. He had thought he had cried all that it was possible to cry earlier that day, but apparently there were secret reserves. Fortunately, the low light hid any symptoms from the others. He swallowed, waiting until his voice was steady before answering.

“I’ve learned a lot of things. The world is even bigger and more complicated than that sorceress could tell it.” He sighed heavily. The weight of the sky above seemed to press down on him. “But no, I haven’t really figured it all out.”

“What is it you’re trying to figure out?” Sirius asked, speaking up for the first time since Remus had started talking. “Maybe if you tell us about it, we can help you.”

Remus’ breath caught in his chest, because they had finally pushed to the point of the story that he couldn’t tell. He closed his eyes and said nothing.

“Yes, I’m _sure_ we can help you!” Tonks said with excitement that only made Remus sink further. The silence continued to stretch until Tonks was bouncing with impatient curiosity. “It has to do with magic, doesn’t it? That’s why you’re always reading the books! Is it a curse?”

Remus’ squeezed his eyes shut, heart pounding. He was horrified that she had somehow managed to guess so close to the truth. Obviously he had not been nearly as casual with the books as he had thought. Fortunately she was now so excited that she babbled right on without stopping for an answer.

“Sirius went to the Ingarian Academy of Magic, he can help you for sure!” she said. “Or he can get more books for you from their library!”

That offer was tempting, but he had learned this lesson already, a long time ago. The wolf didn’t make friends or even allies, only enemies. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said firmly. “I can’t.”

“But _Remus!_ ” she pleaded.

“No!” He said it louder than he had intended to, and he imagined Sirius’ overprotective hackles rising in her defense. “Please don’t pester me about it,” he added more politely.

“Ugh!” She ripped out a large handful of heather and scrunched it up between her hands. “I hate secrets!” She threw the bristly ball of plant matter away over the edge of the cliff and began to pick restlessly at another clump of bushes. Sirius watched her thoughtfully but said nothing in defense of Tonks curiosity, Remus’ privacy, or the plant life.

“I’m tired,” Remus said, hoping to head off any more prying. “I’m going to get to bed.”

“Tonks and I are going to sleep out here,” Sirius said. He gestured to a pile of blankets he must have carried out before Remus had returned. “We haven’t camped out in a long time, and we always used to when we came to the Blue Waste. You should join us.”

Remus slept on the ground too often out of necessity to consider it a special treat to do so voluntarily, but looking back down the hill at the looming shadow of the empty castle, he decided he would rather sleep outside in company than inside alone. He accepted a blanket without a word and settled back down. Tonks took much longer to arrange her large pile of blankets, into which she curled like a baby bird in a nest of feathers. Sirius simply stood up, stretched, and collapsed down into Padfoot, who turned circles in the pile near Tonks’ feet, huffed, and lay down.

It was a cold, clear night. Remus slept restlessly until close to dawn, when he woke up with a start from a nightmare where the wolf hunted him. It stalked him through tall dry grass but never quite got close enough to pounce. He lay stiff and frozen with residual fear for several minutes, trying to shake the feeling that the wolf was still there, watching, right behind his back where he couldn’t see it. Finally he managed to turn to his other side to prove to himself that there was nothing to fear, only to find that he was indeed being stalked, not by the literal wolf, but by the curve of the rising moon. It was only a sliver. By tomorrow it would wane to nothingness, invisible in the daytime sky, but tonight it hung low and heavy near the horizon like a sharp blade.

He closed his eyes against it, but it burned its shape against his eyelids. This time of the month was the farthest away from the change he could get, and it was not nearly far enough. With his eyes closed he was more aware of the sloshing sound of the waves at the base of the cliff. The predawn tide was high, pulled up the beach by the moon itself. Nothing was immune.

He squeezed his eyes further shut and curled his arms around his chest. The truth was, he didn’t even really want to go home. He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t better. He was still stuck under the heavy, deadly weight of his curse. Even if he could somehow make it across or around the ocean, he wouldn’t be welcome. Everyone there knew what he was. It would just be one more place to get chased out of, and then he would be out of places to go. He was already out of places to go.

The moonlight burned against his exposed skin, reminding him that his days in this place, with Sirius and Tonks, were numbered. He had two weeks. Less, if he was cautious, as he must be. He had to give himself enough time to lead the wolf far, far away from them.

That thought was the lid that covered the true nightmares, the ones that existed in his waking mind. He hadn’t always gotten far enough away, and the bloody, open bodies of the wolf’s victims haunted him.

He hadn’t done it himself. He hadn’t killed anyone. He couldn’t control the wolf, and he couldn’t consciously remember doing it. The wolf wasn’t him, it was just a _thing._ It hadn’t been him, but those murders were still his fault. He had underestimated the wolf’s intelligence and tenacity. Never again. He had to get away.

He pressed his hands to his eyes, trying to stop the slow but persistent leak of tears. He tried to keep his breathing steady and silent so he wouldn’t disturb the others, but he must not have been successful, because after a few minutes he felt Padfoot’s wet nose pushing against his hands.

“Go away.” Remus pushed him away roughly. The dog let himself be shoved, but he came right back. The act of talking seemed to open up Remus’ throat, and his shoulders shook with a short sob. “S-stupid dog.”

Padfoot didn’t go away. He licked his hand, then burrowed his great heavy head under one arm and pressed himself along the front of his body. Remus tried to shove him again, but this time Padfoot refused to budge, seeming to double his weight in the particular way that only a stubborn animal could do.

Remus sighed shakily and gave up. He pressed his face into the soft fur of Padfoot’s neck. The huge dog was warm and solid, but he couldn’t accept the comfort without remembering that Sirius would never have offered it if he had known why he was upset, if he had known the nature of his curse.

That thought shook loose the last vestiges of his self control, and he started to cry in earnest. He was so tired of being alone. He was so tired of being pursued, across countries and continents, by a monster that lived in his own body. And now there was nowhere else to run, and that terrified him more than anything else.

Padfoot didn’t fret or fuss over him, even though Remus was clutching big handfuls of the loose skin around his neck. The dog just leaned against him and waited it out, as Sirius had waited out Tonks’ helpless rage at the plate pit. It took a long time.

Remus didn’t notice when he finally stopped crying and fell back asleep, still curled up with Padfoot. The weather took pity on them and thick clouds rolled in, muting the harsh glare of the sunrise so that he didn’t wake up until Tonks prodded them curiously several hours later, for once the first person awake.

“It’s so late!” she said. “Can we have breakfast?”

Remus blinked and backed away from Padfoot guiltily, but she was more disturbed by the lack of ready food than the sleeping arrangement. Padfoot didn’t seem to share Remus’ self-consciousness either. He meandered slowly after her back to the castle, stretching five or ten times along the way, then shifting back to Sirius right at the doorway.

“Come on!” He called back at Remus and ducked inside.

Remus looked up at where the sickle moon was now hanging nearly above his head, although it wasn’t actually visible through the morning clouds.

Two weeks then. He gathered up the blankets they had both forgotten and went inside to make breakfast.


	5. In Which Magic Is Discovered and a Secret Is Revealed

**Day Sixteen**

 

“ _Remus_.” Sirius’ growl carried down the stairs into the main room where Remus was washing up the breakfast dishes. Sirius clumped down the stairs, scowling. “What is _this?_ ”

His long legs carried him across the room in just a few strides. He held up a rumpled pile of bright blue fabric to Remus’ face, glaring accusingly at him.

Remus frowned right back at him. “It’s your coat.”

“The one you ‘mended,’” Sirius said with obvious significance that Remus did not follow.

“Yes. So?”

Sirius huffed in frustration. “You don’t notice anything _wrong_ with it?”

He took the rumpled coat from Sirius’ fingers, shaking it out to look at it properly. It was even more ostentatious than he had remembered. The shade of blue was positively piercing, seemingly designed to forcibly attract attention from all passers-by, and the precise cut of the garment was enough to ensure that, on Sirius, that attention would be positive. Remus looked at it ruefully, remembering how painful it had been to stare at while he had worked, how he had had to try his best not to keep constantly imagining how it would look on Sirius, a vision as blinding as it was alluring. But the cuff he had repaired looked perfectly neat. He couldn’t see what the problem was. He shrugged and handed it back to Sirius.

“Well, it _is_ a bit ridiculous.”

“Yes,“ Sirius growled, “and that seems to be a recent development.”

Remus put his hands up defensively. “All I did was fix it. I didn’t change anything, I just returned it to its former glory, such as it is.”

“I remember that coat,” said Tonks, who had wandered over to see what the fuss was about. “Did you wash it? It seems brighter. And I never noticed how much gold braid it has.”

“No, I didn’t wash it,” Remus said, starting to grow exasperated, “and I definitely didn’t add any more gold braid. It was obnoxious enough already.”

“ _I_ happen to like it,” Sirius said stiffly. “Or I did before you messed with it!”

Remus threw his hands up in the air. “All right, that is it! No more mending for you.”

He stalked off to the couch, grabbing his current book from his bunk on the way.

“Remus, come on!” Sirius persisted, following him. “Put it back the way it was!”

“What? You want me to put the holes back in? I’ll leave that to you.” Remus rolled his eyes. He pulled his knees up in front of himself and put his nose into his book pointedly.

Sirius did not take the hint. He pushed the book down in a rare instance of physical proximity, which he was still so careful to avoid with Remus, and shoved the coat back into his face.

“I _want_ you to take the _spell_ off!”

“What spell?” Now Remus was just confused. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“There’s a spell on it?” Tonks grabbed the coat, bringing it close to her face. She squinted at it from less than an inch away. “Where? What kind of spell?”

Sirius scrunched his hair up with his hands, sending the perfectly aligned strands into rarely seen disarray. “Look, I get that you want your magical ability to be a secret, but you really can’t expect me to keep pretending not to notice when you’re cursing my clothing!”

Remus thought at first that he must be talking to Tonks, but, no, Sirius was definitely staring accusingly at _him._ “What?” he said, flabbergasted. “I—”

“You can do magic?” Tonks squealed. She jumped onto the couch next to him, crushing his feet with her enthusiasm. “That’s so awesome! Why didn’t you tell us?”

“You can’t really think it was me! I can’t do magic.” Remus retrieved his feet from under Tonks’ bony bouncing. “You must have put a spell on it yourself and forgot.”

“Oh no, this was all you!” Sirius insisted.

“That’s ridicu—”

“What kind of spell is it?” Tonks interrupted.

“Oh, I’ll leave that explanation to Remus,” Sirius said dryly.

“How should I know! I told you, I can’t do magic!”

“Oh, please! How do you expect me to believe that, when you’re casting spells left and right?”

“What? What are you talking about?” Remus was starting to get annoyed.

“He’s been casting spells? What kind of spells? I didn’t even notice!” Tonks said.

“That’s because he’s making it up!” Remus said, voice rising, but Sirius was louder.

“He’s been casting spells since he got here! Cookies, spiders—”

“Cookies?? Is this about the cookies?” Remus stood up and faced off against Sirius.

“-dead bodies, and now my coat!” Sirius continued, talking over him.

“Dead bodies!” Remus was struck with sudden horror. What did Sirius know? “What dead bodies?”

“What’s going on?” Tonks asked.

“Well, just the one. He made it not smell!” Sirius pointed his finger at Remus accusingly.

“Oh, are you talking about that person you were _dissecting_?” Remus asked, slightly relieved but still confused. “I didn’t do anything to that body!”

“Yes, you did!”

“You’re crazy! I have had enough. I’m out of here.” He pushed past Sirius, grabbed his pack from the bunk under the stairs, and started shoving things into it.

“Wait! Stop! You don’t have to leave!” Sirius said.

“No, don’t go!” Tonks pulled the pack out of his hands. “We don’t care if you’re doing spells, Sirius does spells all the time!”

“I keep telling you, I am not doing spells!” Remus snatched his half-empty pack back from her.

“Maybe it was an accident!” she suggested, tugging back.

Sirius put his hand on the pack between them, stopping them from tussling over it. He leaned closer, examining Remus’ face.

“You can’t—you can’t not _know_...No one can do spells like that without knowing what they’re doing. And you’re too old!”

“Too old for _what_?” Remus cried, giving up on his pack and covering his face with his hands. “I told you, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Here.” Sirius held the coat up in front of his face again. “You don’t see anything?”

“See what?” Remus sighed with frustration. He wished they would leave him alone. At least Sirius wasn’t yelling anymore. Tonks watched them both, wide eyed.

“Take it. Do you feel anything?” Sirius shoved the coat into his hands.

Remus rolled his eyes. “It feels like a coat!”

“All right then, listen to it.”

“ _Listen_ to it? Sirius, I am not going to listen to your coat!”

“Just try it!”

“No! This is insane!” He tried to toss the coat away, but Sirius grabbed it and held it up to Remus’ ear.

“I can’t believe-” Remus started to say, but then cut himself off, because he actually _could_ hear something. It was the sound of his own voice, like an echo, except it was saying something different from what he was saying now.

He took the coat from Sirius’ hands and held it up to his ear, trying to concentrate.

“ _What a coat you are! Trust Sirius to wear something as ridiculous as you. I bet you do your job well, keeping all eyes on him, hmm? And you probably make him look amazing while you do it._ ” He could even hear his own frustrated sigh at the end.

He had said that, the other day when he was mending the coat. He had been annoyed with the brilliant color, and a bit annoyed with Sirius in general at the moment, and he had muttered as he worked without even really noticing what he was doing. But he didn’t understand why the coat was repeating his words to him now. Was that what Sirius meant by a spell?

Sirius was grinning at him triumphantly. Tonks hovered on her toes at Remus’ shoulder, trying to listen to the coat too.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” she said. “There’s a spell on it! You can hear it!”

“Can you hear it?” Remus asked, alarmed. The last thing he needed was for Tonks to hear his maudlin sexual frustration expressed aloud. By a coat!

“No,” Tonks sighed. “I can’t hear magic. I can only see it, but only if it’s really strong. I can’t actually do any magic except changing myself, so I can’t see much magic either.”

“Oh.” Remus hadn’t realized that she couldn’t do other kinds of magic, but now that he thought about it, all he had seen her do was brew potions, which seemed to be a matter of skill rather than natural ability. He was relieved, at least, that she couldn’t hear the spell, if that’s what it was.

“Sirius can’t hear magic either,” she informed him. “He can only feel it when he touches things.”

“Most people can only experience magic with one of their senses,” Sirius said. “I’m just grateful you can hear it and I didn’t have to try to convince you to taste it!”

“But I didn’t do this!” Remus protested, turning to Sirius. “I can’t do magic!”

“You can, and you did,” Sirius said. “It feels like you. I think you just didn’t _mean_ to. Although I have never heard of someone doing uncontrolled magic as an adult. How old are you?”

“Twenty-four. But how can I have done it without realizing it?” Remus held the coat up to his ear again.

“Well, what do you hear?”

Remus pulled the coat away, trying not to blush. “Me. Talking to the coat.”

Sirius nodded. “Yeah, I thought it might be something like that. You must be a soothsayer.”

“What?”

“That means you do magic by talking to things!” Tonks said authoritatively. “Wow!” she added.

“I know what a soothsayer is.” Remus had read mentions of that kind of magic in one of Sirius’ books. “I just don’t understand how I am doing it, if I even am!”

“Well,” Sirius gestured broadly to the couch. “Sit down. You can start with removing that spell, if you don’t mind.”

“This feels like a spell to you?” Remus hissed at Sirius while Tonks ran over to jump onto the couch. “What does it do?”

“It feels like it would be...distracting for everyone around me if I were to wear it.” Sirius lowered his voice to match Remus’, smiling wryly. “Some kind of glamor spell. Interesting choice considering your advice from the other day. You trying to sabotage me?”

“It was definitely an accident,” Remus said with dignity. He turned away, hiding the blush he was sure must be darkening his cheeks now. He sat down on the couch with Tonks, who moved to make space for him for once.

“What kind of spell is it?” She peered close to the coat again, as if the spell were hidden in the weave of the fabric. Maybe it was.

“It changes the way the coat looks,” Remus said carefully.

Sirius snorted, and Remus glared at him. He had reluctantly accepted that Sirius was not going to act on any attraction either of them might feel, but laughing at him for it was just too much.

“Well?” Sirius said, uncowed by Remus’ reproachful look.

“Well what?” Remus countered. “You’re the one who says I put it on there. So tell me how to take it off!”

“Don’t ask me! I’m no soothsayer!”

“I thought you were going to teach me!” Remus was starting to think this was some sort of prank after all. Maybe Sirius had heard him talking to the coat and decided to throw his words back at him. But then how had he gotten the coat to imitate his voice so precisely? Remus eyed Tonks suspiciously; she had, after all, just been showing off her skill at imitating voices the other day. But he just couldn’t imagine her agreeing to participate in something even tangentially connected to Sirius’ love life.

“Don’t worry,” she was saying. “There was no one to teach me my magic either. They gave me a tutor who came all the way from Montellbino, but even he wasn’t a metamorphmagus, he had just _studied_ them.” She rolled her eyes. “I figured out a lot on my own, and Sirius found ways to help me with the rest.”

Remus raised his eyebrows at that. So Tonks’ tutor had come all the way from a neighboring country? And neither of them could cook or clean...yes, they had definitely been rich at some point.

“I was only eight months old when I started to do magic,” she boasted. “Sirius’ brother fed me a lemon as a joke, because he thought it would make me cry, but instead I just puckered up my lips like this.” She pushed her lips out farther than any normal human would have been able to. “And I turned my skin bright yellow and scaly like a lemon peel, and it was _him_ that cried. Ha!” She demonstrated the yellow effect for Remus and he had to laugh with her. “And that’s why Sirius calls me little lemon,” she said, with the air of one finishing a fable about the origin of an aspect of nature.

Sirius looked at her fondly. “It’s a good nickname for you. Bright and colorful. A few seeds. Sour!” He tickled her side playfully, and she squeaked and wiggled away, trying to use Remus as a shield. “But a very important ingredient, no matter where you go,” he finished with a smile. “That’s what your dad used to say.”

Tonks’ yellow skin and bragging air faded at the same time. Her face became solemn. “Really?”

Sirius nodded. Remus looked between them, suddenly understanding their relationship in a new way. They really had grown up together it seemed, like siblings.

“Are you two related?” he asked.

“Kind of,” Tonks said. “Sirius’ mother was my guardian when my parents died.”

“All right, enough storytelling,” Sirius cut in, as Remus was opening his mouth to ask another question. “Let’s get on to the soothsaying.”

“I still don’t know what to do,” Remus said. “Don’t you have any books on this?”

“Nope. Just try some things. You cast spells by talking, so try talking at it.”

Remus looked at the coat skeptically. He seriously doubted that was all there was to it. If all he had to do was talk, his ability would have been a lot more obvious by now. “What should I say?”

“Tell it to stop being under a spell,” Tonks suggested.

Remus hesitantly raised the balled up coat in front of his face, so they were eye to eye. “Stop being under a spell,” he said, feeling thoroughly ridiculous.

“Did it work?” Tonks asked.

Sirius reached out to brush the coat with his fingers, testing if he could feel the spell. “Nope. Same as before.”

Remus held the coat up to his ear. He still heard his own voice repeating the words from when he had mended it.

“You probably have to talk a certain way,” Sirius said. “Oh, I know, try in your native language!”

“I don’t think so,” Remus said. “I hear myself talking to it in your language.”

Sirius frowned. They all stared at the coat thoughtfully for a few moments.

“Try replicating what you did before,” Sirius said. “You know, whatever you were thinking or...feeling.”

Remus gave him a look, but it was not a bad approach. He closed his eyes and listened to the coat again.

“I was annoyed,” he said aloud.

“Maybe you have to be mad for it to work,” Tonks said.

Remus shook his head. “That doesn’t sound right either.” He turned to Sirius. “You said you noticed other spells? Tell me what I did, then maybe I can work out how I did it.”

Sirius leaned back in his chair. “Let’s see. The first one I noticed was the cookies, some sort of babbling spell. I thought you were being sneaky, trying to probe us for information.”

Remus tried to remember back. “No, I was worried about you. I wanted you to talk to each other.”

“So you tried to drug us. Sweet of you.” Remus opened his mouth to protest that accusation, but Sirius talked over him. “Then you were terrorizing the spiders, and I asked you to stop. You sent them all upstairs.”

“I thought that was you!” Remus said, remembering how surprised he had been to see the spiders obeying.

Sirius laughed. “Oh no, not me. Spiders don’t listen to me. Dogs, maybe.” He winked, and Tonks giggled.

“And you made that woman’s body smell less,” she said.

“Yes,” Remus agreed reluctantly. “It was very disturbing.”

“Maybe it happens when you’re feeling super emotional then!” Tonks suggested.

Remus sighed. “I wasn’t that emotional the other times though. Let me think.”

He must have put a spell on the cookies when he was baking them. He vaguely remembered muttering to himself as he put them in the oven. He had been sweeping when the spiders had fled, and he had been sewing Sirius’ cuff when he had apparently charmed the coat.

“I was busy,” he said slowly. He leaned over Tonks to get his bag, and pulled out his sewing supplies. She and Sirius watched, nearly equally wide-eyed, as he threaded a needle and began to sew a few reinforcing stitches in the seams of the coat, trying to put himself back into the mindset he had been in when he had cast the spell without embarrassing himself too much. Sewing could be very meditative for him, and he had been engrossed in his task, for all that his mind had been on Sirius’ irritatingly attractive appearance in irritatingly unattractive fashions.

“Try talking to it,” Tonks whispered, too close to his ear.

“Quiet!” he shushed her, trying not to break his concentration. She closed her mouth, but after another minute of sewing she gripped his arm. He tried to shake her off, but she held on, squeezing tighter and pulling his arm away so that he nearly stabbed her with the needle.

“Remus!” Sirius said urgently, his voice high with alarm. “She can’t talk! You told her to be quiet, and now she can’t talk!”

“What!” Remus turned to her. Her eyes were wide with excitement and no small amount of fear, and she quivered like a small dog being told to stay still until it could have a treat. “Oh gods, I’m so sorry! No, Tonks, I didn’t mean it! Talk!”

“Wow!” she burst out, and Remus and Sirius both sighed with relief. “You really did it! I couldn’t say anything, it was so weird! But that proves it, you really can do magic! How did you do that? Your voice didn’t sound different or anything. How did you know what to say?”

“I don’t know—” Remus started to say, but Tonks talked right over him.

“I saw a soothsayer before, but I never heard her talk or do spells, she would just stay so quiet! She used a chalkboard to write things to talk to people, but you won’t have to do that will you Remus? Oh, now I’m talking a lot, oh! I can’t stop!”

“You told her to talk,” Sirius said tensely, raising his voice to be heard as she continued to babble. He grasped Tonks’ wrist, seeking confirmation. “You didn’t undo the spell, you just cast a new one!”

“I didn’t mean to!” Remus said despairingly. “Tonks, since when do you listen to me anyways? You don’t need me to tell you when to talk! You always do just as you please!”

Her mouth shut with an audible clap. She took a deep breath, paused, then said, very slowly. “That was. So. So. Weird!”

Remus stared at her, waiting to see if she would do something else strange, but Sirius gave him a strained smile. “That seemed to work. There’s no spell anymore. But I’m starting to think you should be practicing by yourself.”

“No, it’s all right,” Remus said. “I think I get it now.”

Now that he had felt himself do it twice in a row, it was impossible to deny that he was actually doing something, and he thought he could feel the difference between spoken spells and simply speaking. It was like being able to see two different shapes in the same cloud. Once he had the trick of it, he should be able to switch between them easily.

He spread the coat out in front of him on the low table and gave it a good glare. “Look what you started. Enough now. You go back to being a regular coat with no spell, just like before.”

He held the coat up to his ear, and Sirius grabbed one sleeve. The coat was silent, as Remus had expected it to be. He nodded firmly to himself.

“I understand now,” he said, speaking to himself in the same intentional yet conversational way. “I won’t cast spells on accident again.”

Sirius stared at him. “Did you just…cast a spell on yourself?”

“That’s so smart!” Tonks said. “You used your own magic to teach yourself, just like I do!”

Remus smiled, relieved. “Thanks. I think I still have a lot to learn. Are you all right? I really didn’t mean to do that.”

“Oh yeah, I’m fine. It was neat!” She tossed her head proudly, although he thought he could see through her bravado a bit. “But you better not put any more spells on me.”

“I won’t, I promise.”

Sirius swept his coat onto his shoulders in one smooth motion. “Well? How do you like my extremely regular coat?”

“It looks very regular,” Remus reassured him and Tonks nodded.

“It’s practically boring now!” she said. “You’re right, it did look different before.”

“So, Remus.” Sirius sat back down into his chair with a graceful flop. “How is it that you had no idea you could do this?”

“Don’t they test people for magic where you come from?” Tonks asked.

“Of course they do,” Remus said, slightly offended. “I was tested when I was a baby. The wizard in Lonuma’ugo said my magical potential was present but extremely low. She said I would never develop any abilities. I guess she was wrong.”

“And you never noticed anything?” Sirius asked. “Maybe you’ve been casting spells for years and you just never noticed. Do things often seem to go your way?”

“No. Absolutely not.” Remus stared at him. “If anything it’s the other way around. I’m pretty sure I would have noticed if the whole world just cooperated with me all the time.”

“Magical potential exists on a semifluid continuum,” Sirius mused. “If this is new then something magical must have happened to you that triggered the onset. Something recent—oh damn.” His eyes widened with sudden realization and he rubbed his chin self-consciously.

“What is it?” Remus said.

“Um. I might know what it was,” Sirius said, with an air of definitive guilt. “When you arrived, I might have…done something.”

“ _What?_ What did you do?” Remus thought back frantically to his first few days at the castle. He couldn’t remember anything distinctly magical, especially not something Sirius had done. He had helped Tonks brewing potions, but he hardly thought that would count.

“It was just a little dream!” Sirius protested. “I got home and you were just—here! Tonks said you were being chased by a mob, so you can’t blame me for investigating. I was trying to figure out who you were and what you were up to. So I pulled you into a dream to talk to you.”

“So this is _your_ fault!” Remus said. “You tampered with me in my sleep!”

“No, no!” Sirius waved his hands frantically. “It wasn’t like that! I didn’t do anything against your will. I just put the dream there and you walked in, I swear. You didn’t even tell me anything useful. I was injured and more tired than I thought. I couldn’t sustain the dream long enough to ask you any interesting questions. It shouldn’t have had this kind of effect on you regardless.”

“Obviously you’re wrong, because I definitely couldn’t charm spiders and dead bodies before I got here!”

“Look, no one dream could do this. Either that wizard messed up your reading or you’ve been exposed to a larger-than-average amount of magical experiences. You’ve traveled around the world! Even the ambient magic of that many ecosystems might have increased your potential. If you had other magical experiences during your journey then that would push it along even more. It would take an enormous amount of exposure to tip your potential this far.”

“Magical experiences,” Remus repeated with a sinking feeling. Like, perhaps, changing into a raging monster every month for twelve years? “I see.”

“My botched attempt at a shared dream was just the final straw, that’s my guess.” Sirius shrugged. “I was never very good at illusions anyways. That’s my mother’s specialty.”

“I can’t believe this.” Remus dropped his head into his hands. He found this explanation very upsetting. He would much rather that Sirius had done this to him than the wolf. The wolf never brought anything good.

“But it’s not bad, right?” Tonks asked quietly. “Sirius is always saying there’s no such thing as good and bad magic, just good and bad people.”

Remus sighed. “I guess it might be useful. I’m just surprised, and honestly I already have a lot to worry about.”

“But now you have your magic to help you,” Tonks said with a yawn. “It’s going to be easier, not harder.”

Remus bit his lip. That possibility had not yet occurred to him. If he could cast spells on people, including himself, could he stop the transformation? His heart seemed to wrap up around itself with excitement. He didn’t see any reason why that wouldn’t work. Couldn’t he just tell himself to stay human?

“Sirius,” he said slowly, “can you get me some books about soothsayer magic?”

“Sure,” Sirius said, but he seemed distracted. He was watching Tonks, who had curled up into a little ball so she could fit lying down on her half of the purple couch. “Tonks, are you all right?”

“My head hurts,” she confessed, and Remus turned to her in alarm. Sirius was already at her side, running his hands swiftly over her body, presumably looking for remnants of Remus’ spellwork.

“I think you have a fever,” he said, putting his hand against her cheek. “Wait here.”

He dashed up the stairs. Remus picked up her hand and held it to his ear awkwardly. It was a bit warm, but he didn’t hear anything.

“What does it feel like?” he asked, stomach tight with concern. He didn’t understand how anything he had said could have given her a fever.

Before she could answer, Sirius was back with a handful of magical instruments. He shooed Remus away so she could lie flat. Remus hovered nervously behind the couch while Sirius slowly passed a gold comb with a silver crystal over her body, then a larger chunk of what appeared to be the same crystal.

“You don’t appear to have any spells on you,” he said, and Remus breathed out in relief.

“Then what’s wrong?” Remus asked.

“Shh.” Sirius took out a palm-sized mirror in an ornately carved wooden frame and held it over Tonks’ face. “What do you see? What color?”

Tonks squinted up at it. “It’s pink, like my hair. And gold.”

“Good. No aura reaction.”

“What does that mean?” Remus asked.

“It means she isn’t allergic to your magic,” Sirius said. “And a damn good thing too, because I have no idea what I would do if she were.”

“People can be allergic to each other’s magic?” Tonks asked.

“It’s very rare. But so are you.” That made her smile a little. Sirius picked up another instrument and this one Remus recognized as the thing they had used to look inside the dead body. He backed up quickly so he wouldn’t be able to see inside the rectangle formed by the red string. He definitely did not want to see the inside of Tonks’ body.

Sirius passed the instrument over each part of her, starting at her feet and working his way up. When he got to her neck he stopped moving and frowned.

“Is your throat sore?”

Tonks nodded.

“Since when?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“Yesterday morning!” Sirius sighed in exasperation and put the instrument down. “Why didn’t you tell me!”

“I thought it was because I had been practicing voices!” she said irritably. “Why does it matter?”

“I let you sleep outside in the cold air!” Sirius looked up at Remus with another sigh. “She’s just sick. She was probably sick all day and just didn’t say anything.”

Tonks looked mulish. “I felt fine until a few minutes ago.”

“You’re not fine now. Go up to bed.” He pointed firmly up the stairs. “I’ll make you something.”

Tonks glared but she went upstairs, stomping her feet in protest.

“Promise you won’t practice magic without me!” she called back down to Remus, who made no such promise.

Sirius bustled around the work table, assembling ingredients.

“Can’t you just give her some Healing potion?” Remus asked. There was still two fingers-widths of potion left in the tall bottle.

“That potion is best for healing wounds and other things that interfere with the body’s inherent form. I’m pretty sure she just has a bad cold. It’s better for people to fight off minor illnesses themselves, or they become more susceptible. Especially her. She seems to get sick more than most people, probably because she’s always stressing her body with changing. She burns a lot more energy than other people her size.”

“Is that why she sleeps so much?” Remus had wondered at her ability to sleep twelve to fourteen hours every single day.

”And eats so much.” Sirius sighed. “We kept her up late last night, that probably made it worse. I wish she’d said something.”

“I’m just glad it wasn’t me.” Remus leaned on the workbench, watching Sirius grind herbs into powder with a mortar and pestle. “I’m really sorry about before. And about the other spells too.”

Sirius pursed his lips. “You didn’t mean to do it. Fortunately it was all harmless in the end. Maybe that says something about you...even your instinctual magic is harmless. Most people end up putting nasty curses on their siblings or something. Statistically, I would say that makes you a better-than-average person.”

Remus winced and looked down at his hands. If only that were true. He would give anything to be harmless.

“Well, I apologize for scaring everyone then.”

Sirius shrugged. “She’s pretty hard to scare. I, on the other hand, am a lot easier to spook, especially if you know which buttons to push.”

“Really?” Obviously endangering Tonks was one of those buttons, but other than that, Sirius had shown no signs of being flighty. On the contrary, he returned repeatedly to fight in a war he didn’t seem to believe in. That must take courage.

“Oh yes.” Sirius laughed bitterly at himself. “That’s one thing you’ll learn about me if you stick around here long enough. I am, at heart, a coward.”

Remus frowned. He couldn’t really see much evidence for that, unless he wanted to be really uncharitable and call Sirius’ refusal to sleep with him cowardice. But it was hard to deny the real reason for that, which was a good one: Sirius had promised Tonks he wouldn’t sleep with anyone in the house. Of course, they could just _leave the house_ , he thought bitterly to himself.

“Where did you learn to do that?” He gestured at the crushed herbs Sirius was now funneling into a tea bag. “How did you learn your magic?”

“I took basic potions at the Academy. The rest I learned from books, and trial and error. I didn’t like it in school. It was the most boring thing I did. But when Tonks and I had to leave, I needed a way to make money, and I saw an opportunity. Not many apothecaries sell stuff for women. I’m learning to like it.”

“You had to leave? Why? From where?”

Sirius paused, taking more time to sew the top of the tea bag closed than Remus thought was strictly necessary.

“Like Tonks said, my mother assumed guardianship when Tonks’ parents died. My mother is not a nice person. She was cruel to her.” He dropped the tea bag abruptly. “I was away at school for most of it. I didn’t know how bad it was until...well, it got really bad. I helped her leave. She was only eight.”

“And you’ve been taking care of her ever since,” Remus finished. Sirius must have been very young. He didn’t look much older than twenty now. Remus could only imagine how hard it must have been, but at the same time he envied them. “At least you had each other.”

“I should have been there for her sooner.” Sirius pulled a piece of paper off the shelf and transfigured it into a large teacup. That kind of transfiguration, like Padfoot, seemed to be effortless for him. Remus wondered how much he had learned at school and how much he had just been able to do. Did the Academy he spoke of train soothsayers? Not that being a werewolf was at all conducive to a student lifestyle.

“How did you find out about your ability?” Remus asked, changing the subject.

“I found out when I was seven. A little later than most, but where I came from they didn’t test kids for magic.” He walked across the room to put some more wood in the stove and put the kettle on. “I always liked building things, with blocks, paper, sticks, whatever. Then one day the sticks I was stacking just turned into what I wanted. That’s what I studied at the Academy, transfiguration. Or I did until I had to quit to take care of Tonks.” He tapped his foot impatiently, waiting for the kettle to heat the water.

Remus bent down to look at the kettle. “Come on, kettle, you can do better than that. Hurry it up, there’s a sick kid waiting.”

Sirius raised his eyebrows and touched his finger to the handle of the kettle. “An acceleration charm. Interesting.”

They watched the kettle expectantly. Remus counted in his head, and he had only reached thirty when the kettle began to steam.

“Now that’s the kind of magic I like to see,” Sirius said approvingly. “I’m going to take this up to her, then I’m going out. We’re out of licorice root.”

He poured the water over the tea, snatched up a few pieces of bread, along with the entire jam jar, and went upstairs.

Once Sirius had checked on Tonks, made Remus promise to check on her as well, and left, Remus wandered back over to the now-cool tea kettle and held it up to his ear.

_Come on, kettle, you can do better than that. Hurry it up, there’s a sick kid waiting._

Remus considered whether he should take the spell off but decided against it. No one could have a problem with brewing tea more quickly.

He went around the room systematically listening to things. It felt very strange to do, but he was glad he did it. He found nearly a dozen more spells on various objects, some benign, some inconvenient, and some just confusing. For example, at some point he had told one of the stools to move out of his way, which explained why it always seemed to be falling over. He had also apparently told quite a few books they were “ _useless,_ ” which Sirius would definitely not have appreciated if he had noticed. Remus undid those spells and most of the others. He left several spells to the effect of “ _don’t you dare get dusty again,_ ” since it seemed like the only hope the castle had of staying clean once he left.

He wanted to try a few other things, but first he went upstairs to check on Tonks. He brought the kettle and poured more hot water over the teabag Sirius had made.

“I’m booored,” Tonks moaned.

Remus felt her forehead. “You still have a fever. Do you want a book?”

“ _No_.” She glared at him reproachfully. “I want to watch you do magic!”

Remus told her about the various spells he had found around the house, and—at her prompting—checked the objects in her room as well. She found it very entertaining to watch him listening to all her knickknacks, clothes, and furniture. To her disappointment, he only found one spell, which he had apparently cast to keep her bedcovers from getting wrinkled.

“I can’t even see it,” she mourned, after examining the blanket closely for several minutes. “That’s not exciting at all. Do something else...oh I know! Can you make me not be sick any more?”

“I have a feeling Sirius would object. If you can’t have a Healing potion, you shouldn’t have a healing spell either. In fact, I should probably leave you alone to rest.”

She flopped back onto the bed with a groan. “I hate being sick. I want to do something!”

“Maybe you can still help me,” Remus said. “How’s your tea? Not too hot?”

She shrugged noncommittally. He picked up the teacup, bringing it to eye level, and tested the temperature with his fingertip.

“That’s perfect,” he praised the honey-brown liquid. “Not too hot, not too cold. Now, I want you to stay that way. No one likes cold tea.”

“Whoa.” She accepted the cup back from him, cradling it between her hands. “Is it going to stay warm forever now?”

“I’m not sure. Earlier I told the kettle to heat water more quickly, and it did, but it wasn’t instantaneous. There must be limits to what I can do. Watch the clock for me, and see how long the tea stays warm.”

“You want me to watch my tea?” She sighed. “That’s, like, a little kid job.”

“It’s a sick person’s job. And I really do want to know. Drink some too, and call me if you need anything.”

She nodded, and as he left he saw her close her eyes in exhaustion that she had been trying to hide. 

Back downstairs, he collected all the clean teacups Sirius had transfigured, and began giving them instructions. It wasn’t hard to charm them, as long as he only asked them to do teacup-like things. He could spell them to influence the tea they held—making the tea taste bad, for example. It was not as effective as charming the tea itself, but it continued working no matter how many times he refilled the cup.

He couldn’t change things into other things, as Sirius could do. He couldn’t change the tea into milk, conjure more tea out of thin air, or make what was in the cup disappear, although he could slightly speed the process of evaporation, as he had been able to speed the process of boiling.

He could ask a teacup to shatter on the lightest touch. He could also spell one not to break even when he threw it. After some practice, he could even convince one to break in a particular pattern. By the time he had refined that skill, which was less useful in itself and more of an experiment in teaching himself to teach himself, he was out of teacups.

His ability seemed to be restricted to changing the behavior of people and things, rather than changing their nature. There was some gray area that he didn’t quite understand—was charming cookies to make people talk in alignment with the inherent properties of cookies?—which made him unsure if he would be able to really cure himself. But he could settle for convincing the wolf to be less bloodythirsty. Surely he could do that. Would spells he cast on his body when human still be effective when he transformed into a wolf? Was telling himself not to transform at all an attempt to change his behavior, or his nature?

There would be no way to be certain until he tried it, but he made an attempt and set up one more experiment. He had just finished charming when Sirius returned.

“I got you these.” Sirius plopped several books in front of Remus on the workbench, along with a paper bag that smelled like the herbs he had been grinding up before. “How’s Tonks?”

“Not too bad. I was up there a little while ago. She seemed tired, but not too tired to try to bully me into practicing magic with her.”

Remus turned the books so he could read the spines. 

 _Principles of Spoken Magic_  

 _A History of Soothsayers in Ingary_  

 _Nommin Constantan, a Biography of a Master Soothsayer_  

_Balancing Energies_

“Balancing Energies?” he asked.

Sirius shrugged. “Everyone needs to know how to avoid burnout. That one I got at the the herbal supply. The rest I borrowed from the royal library, so don’t rough them up too much.”

“I’ll be careful. Thank you. I’ll take a look at them in just a second.” Remus pushed the books to the side, revealing the three white papers he had placed on the table earlier. “First, can you help me with something?”

“Sure, let me just go check on Tonks.”

He returned shortly. “Her fever’s up. Hopefully she’ll burn through whatever it is. I’m going to make her another dose. She won’t drink the tea she has. Apparently it’s part of an experiment?” He gave Remus a look.

“Sorry. I just made it stay warm. I told her she could still drink it.”

Sirius shook his head, but he didn’t issue further reprimands. “What was it you wanted?”

Remus started by explaining the experiments he had already done, then gestured to the three papers on the table. “Now I want you to turn these into teacups.”

Sirius raised his eyebrows and picked up the papers. “Ah. I see what you’re going for here.” He held up the papers in turn. “This one’s supposed to break as soon as I change it. This one’s a control—no spell—and this one’s not supposed to change at all, right?”

Remus nodded. “The second one had a spell, but I removed it, to see if that matters.”

Sirius ruffled the edges of the papers thoughtfully. “I’ll try, but I have to tell you, it won’t work.”

“You don’t think you’ll be able to transfigure them?” Remus’ heart leapt, only to be smacked back down by Sirius’ next words.

“No, I know I will. Transfiguration is second level magic, after conjuring. Soothsaying is third level magic, followed by illusions. It’s all in there.” He pointed at the books he had just brought. “First order magic creates matter. Second order magic changes matter. Third order, like yours, influences the behavior of matter, and the fourth order is about the perception of matter, like illusions. The higher levels always trump the lower ones.”

Remus bit his lip, staring at the third paper. What Sirius was saying did match up with his own haphazard experiments. “Just try it, please.”

Remus watched, struggling to hide his dismay as Sirius crumpled and transfigured each paper with ease. He placed the teacups onto the workbench in front of Remus one by one.

Remus reached out to touch the first one, the one that should have shattered. It didn’t. He held it up to his ear, but heard nothing. The other two cups were equally silent. They didn’t appear to remember what he had told them when they were papers. It was like he had never charmed them at all.

He shook his head and forced himself to stand up and do something before his distress became evident. He stacked the cups, trying to hide the way his shaking hands made them clatter together. Fortunately, Sirius didn’t seem to notice. He was occupied with preparing more teabags. Remus shoved the horrifically normal cups into the cupboard and flopped down on the couch.

It was unbelievably unfair. He had—seemingly spontaneously—developed this ability that should be very useful, but it couldn’t help him at all. He was sure his own body would behave just like the teacups. It would transform, no matter what he demanded of it, and any spells he had cast beforehand to try to tame the wolf would disappear. He couldn’t change the only thing that mattered.

And it didn’t make sense! If his magic was “third order”, then so had been the magic of the witch that had cursed him. If he couldn’t make something into something else, she shouldn’t have been able to either. He was still a human, still a person. The wolf was just something that _happened_ to him. It wasn’t his _nature_. Was it?

There was an odd patch of light on the ceiling. Remus followed its path downwards to its source: the carved wooden mirror that Sirius had used to check Tonks’ aura, which he had left on the coffee table. Remus picked it up. It reflected parts of the room accurately until he held it directly in front of his face. Then the glass clouded with smoky blackness. Remus frowned at it. He was pretty sure no one had a black aura. Maybe he wasn’t using it correctly.

A crescent of white appeared near the top quadrant of the mirror and slowly crept downwards, taking over the circular surface until the mirror showed only a swirling white circle. Remus’ hands clenched in anger around the wooden frame. He knew those colors and those shapes too well. His aura was black and white, like the phases of the moon, as if that was all there was to him.

Suddenly a streak of red slashed across the mirror, leaving dots of bloody color in its wake. Remus nearly dropped it in shock. The wolf was there, in him, around him, following him, leaving destruction in its wake.

“Not everyone has an aura as beautiful as Tonks.” Sirius spoke from close behind him, making him jump again. “Don’t take it to heart.”

Remus slapped the mirror onto the coffee table facedown. “Did you see it?”

Sirius shook his head. “Only you can see it.”

Remus turned away from him, disturbed both by what he had seen and by the close call. He was not being careful enough. If the mirror had worked just a little differently, he would have made his distinctly lycanthropic aura visible to Sirius, who would have had a clear view from the workbench. He had nearly ruined everything in a fit of self-pitying curiosity.

“Don’t let it get to you,” Sirius said gently. “Mine’s not too pretty either. Here.” He held out a tray with a fresh batch of tea and more food. “Take this up and let Tonks take your mind off it. Tell her about your teacup experiments. She must be getting dangerously bored up there.”

Tonks was not bored. She was asleep. Remus tiptoed into the room, hoping to place the tray on the bedside table without waking her. Her face came into view as he rounded the bed. She had changed her appearance again, and he didn’t recognize this one. She looked like a boy of her own age with olive skin and wavy brown hair. Her nose was slightly wider at the bridge, and her lips were less full. She had even incorporated little details like freckles and acne, which quite added to the realism. She had changed the rest of her body too. Her hands, where they were curled near her face, were a little more stubby, a little more knuckled, and he could tell from the outline of the blanket draped across her that some of her other proportions were different too.

Remus tilted his head, looking at her more closely. He hadn’t seen her wear this face before, but there was something familiar about it. Maybe it was one of the children from Porthaven.

His scrutiny appeared to wake her, revealing dark brown eyes a shade lighter than her hair. They were glossy and unfocused with fever.

“Hello.” He held out the tray with a smile. “That’s a new face. How are you feeling?”

She blinked up at him from her boy’s face in fever-induced confusion once, twice, three times. Then she started to scream.

Remus jerked backwards, spilling the hot tea over the tray and himself. Tonks pulled the blankets over her head, still screaming loud enough to make his ears ring.

“What—what’s wrong?” Remus asked.

Sirius burst into the room so quickly he might have flown up the stairs. “What happened? What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything!” Remus had to raise his voice to be heard above her wailing. “I just said hello! I complimented her new face, that’s it!”

“New face?” Sirius looked from Remus to the screaming pile of blankets and back. He had already placed himself between them. “Get out.”

“What? Why? Tonks?” Remus put the tray down on the foot of the bed, trying to crane his neck around Sirius to see her. 

“Get out!” Sirius repeated, taking a threatening step forward.

“She’s delirious or something!” Remus protested, but he let Sirius herd him out of the room.

Remus huffed at the door that was shortly slammed in his face and went into the bathroom, where he still had a spare shirt hanging from washing the other day. He left the tea-drenched one soaking in the sink. By the time he turned off the tap, the screaming had separated into individual sobs, although their intensity had not lessened. He could hear Sirius’ voice occasionally trying to interrupt, but he couldn’t make out the words.

Remus glanced around guiltily, but he was just too curious and too concerned. He leaned against the wall next to the sink and whispered, “What a lovely, sturdy wall. Sirius made you, didn’t he? Say, do you mind easing up a little? Something’s wrong, and I want to help. It would be ever so useful if I could hear what they’re saying.”

The wall seemed to listen to him, because suddenly Remus could hear every word of the conversation happening on the other side of it with perfect clarity.

“Dora, Dora, please,” Sirius was saying. He was obviously talking to Tonks, although Remus had never heard either of them call her Dora before. “It’ll be all right, really!”

“I’m stuck!” she wailed. “I can’t change back!”

“You’re not stuck, you’re just upset and...damn you’re really burning up. I can feel it even through the blankets. If you just calm down—”

“He saw me!” Her voice cracked and shook with panicky intensity. “He’s going to think I’m a boy! He’ll recognize me!”

“Whatever he thinks, I’ll deal with it. Come on, little lemon, at least let me see...”

There was more, but Remus was no longer listening. He thanked the wall absentmindedly and removed the spell. Once Tonks—was her real name Dora?—had mentioned being recognized, Remus realized he did indeed recognize that face she had been wearing after all.

It didn’t take long to confirm. The posters were plastered on every lamppost and building corner in Kingsbury. Even in the growing darkness, Remus found one within moments and brought it back inside to see in the better light.

 _Our beloved Prince Theodore!_ the poster proclaimed in dramatic print. _Taken, but never forgotten! For him we fight, and out hearts never waver!_

The boy in the portrait below was several years younger, but it was clearly the same face Remus had just seen. Prince Theodore...Dora.

Sirius, who had come back downstairs without Remus noticing, gently pulled the flyer out of his hand.

“I don’t want that in the house. It’s bad enough that they’re plastered all over Kingsbury.” He tossed it into the fireplace.

“Is that really her? Tonks is the prince?” Remus paused. “Him?”

“Her,“ Sirius said very firmly.

“But it says—”

“Tonks is a girl.” Sirius said, planting his feet in the matter of one who would argue all night. “No one could convince her otherwise, not even with a knife to her throat. Trust me, I know.”

Remus frowned, trying to think how to ask a question he didn’t have words for in Sirius’ language. “But that’s what she really looks like? When she’s not using her magic, I mean.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s a boy.” Sirius scowled, voice sharp with defensiveness. “I know it’s a bit strange. I didn’t understand either for a long time, but that doesn’t mean—she doesn’t know how to be any other way!”

Remus nodded. “I see. And people here don’t listen?”

Sirius looked a bit taken aback by this. “No, they don’t. Not at the palace anyways. No one else knows.”

Remus sat leaning on the back of the couch. “It’s not strange, just unusual. Although most people don’t have the luxury of picking a new appearance like she does. Where I come from boy-children can grow up to be otamo’laigo. Someone who goes to live with the women,” he translated. “There isn’t even a word in your language, is there?”

“No.” The corners of Sirius’ mouth turned down. “No nice ones anyways. Would they really just…let her be a girl?”

Remus pursed his lips. “It’s not quite like that. Otamo’laigo is more than a gender, it’s a whole life…a destiny.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, really. We’re not there.”

Otamo’laigo was not, Remus thought, exactly the same as what Dora was. Dora was clearly a girl, while otamo’laigo was one of three genders his people recognized. It was neither male nor female in the way people used those terms here, but the situation was similar enough for him to have some sympathy for her. And he had visited enough other cultures that understood the diversity of gender to know that it was not nearly as straightforward and binary as people on this continent liked to pretend. There were just so many ways to be, and so little point in forcing people to go against their inclinations.

There had been a time when Remus had thought of becoming otamo’laigo himself. He had realized, shortly before the witch cursed him, that he would never be interested in women. Many otamo’laigo married men. It had seemed like an easy solution, but a little experimentation had shown him he would never be able to tolerate pretending to be something he wasn’t. 

“Destiny, huh?” Sirius drifted, almost absentmindedly, out of the defensive stance he had first assumed when he had seen the political poster. He glanced up the stairs, as if he could see Tonks through all the walls and floor between them. “I’ve read about that kind of thing, but it’s not like that here. She thinks she’s the only one like her in the whole world…”

“She’s not alone, no. Not in that way.” Remus said. “But she _is_ unique, isn’t she? You know, my people would say this whole war is a spirit’s punishment for trying to change her.  I’m not so superstitious any more, but still. Everyone thinks the Strangians kidnapped her! People are killing themselves trying to get her back. I see why you took her away, but this isn’t right either.”

Immediately, Sirius tensed up again. “It’s not like that! I told you when you first came here, those posters are just stupid, warmongering propaganda. My mother has only one purpose in her life, and that’s to make war. It’s a game to her, and she doesn’t care what it takes to win. She is just using Dora’s absence to fuel her plans.”

“Your mother?” Remus’ eyes widened as another piece of the puzzle fell into place. “Your mother—Tonks’ guardian, she must be the Royal Sorceress, then.”

The Royal Sorceress was also the Regent, queen in all but name. Remus wasn’t sure how the politics of rank worked here, but it seemed to him that this would make Sirius nearly a prince himself. No wonder nobody washed dishes in this place.

Sirius sighed. “We don’t have many secrets from you now. Yes, my mother is the Royal Sorceress, and Dora’s guardian. She was given—or rather she demanded—guardianship when the king and queen died. There’s no one else in the family line, and she had been close in the king’s councils, so the court went along with it. She took over as Regent, theoretically just until Dora—you can call her that now, I suppose, when no one’s around—was old enough to rule, but I’m sure she never planned to give up her power. Dora’s supposed kidnapping is just an excuse. My mother doesn’t care one bit about getting her back, except perhaps to kill her and eliminate a variable in her plans.”

“But Tonks is still the heir!” Remus protested. “Surely she has some power, even if it’s only figurative. Aren’t there any checks on the Regent’s control? Government officials? Nobles that would ally with you?” Remus cast around wildly. He was about as much an expert in politics as he was a fish.

Sirius laughed sourly. “Checks? You must be thinking of a different government. They don’t have any of that here, just a good, old fashioned monarchy. Which seemed to work out fine until my mother came along and exploited it. She’s got the law, such that it is, on her side, and she’s put everyone who might disagree under so many layers of illusions that they only ever see what she wants them to see. That’s her magic, by the way, illusions. That’s how she got the job as Royal Sorceress in the first place.”

“But then your magic should be stronger than hers. You can undo the illusions!”

“The orders of magic are about physics, not strength. Yes, I could undo the illusions, but not without transfiguring people’s brains, which never ends well. Even Dora doesn’t change her brain.”

“But surely you must be able to do _something_? Anything is better than letting all those people die for an imaginary cause!”

“I _am_ doing something. I’m letting Dora grow up, which would not have happened if she had stayed in the palace.” Sirius ran his hands through his hair, which Remus now recognized as a sign of peak exasperation. “Remus, she’s only twelve! She doesn’t deserve all that!”

Only twelve. Remus had been twelve when he had been forced to grow up, and there was a small, resentful part of him that wanted to insist Tonks do the same. But he couldn’t even consider voicing that thought aloud without recognizing the bitter place it came from and feeling ashamed. Of course Tonks deserved better. Anyone that didn’t turn into a man-hunting monster once a month would.

“Remus. You can’t tell anyone.” Remus was suddenly very aware of the way Sirius loomed over him in the flickering firelight, and that at some point he had positioned himself between Remus and the door. “She’s suffered enough. The war isn’t her fault, no matter what you think.”

Remus glared up at him. He did not like being threatened. “I don’t blame _her_.”

Sirius’ lips tightened, but he didn’t back down. “Judge me if you want. I have no regrets. You have no idea what it was like for her. I mean it. I won’t let you ruin what happiness she’s been able to find.”

Remus scowled. He pushed off from his perch against the back of the couch and sidestepped out from under Sirius’ menacing height. He purposely turned his back, under the guise of putting the kettle back on the stove.

“Remus,” Sirius growled.

“All right! I won’t tell anyone. It’s not like I would even know who to tell anyways.” Remus sighed, resigned. It wasn’t his problem.

He pulled out one of the teacups he had failed to enchant. “Do you have any more of those teabags? I spilled that cup I took up.”

Sirius seemed to take this as the peace offering it was meant to be. He funneled more of the ground mixture into a fresh bag and whip-stitched it closed. “Here. You take it up. She’ll want to talk to you.”

“Thank you,” Remus said, not just for the tea, but also for Sirius trusting him so soon after their disagreement. He was so protective, yet so quick to forgive. As Remus watched the hot water swirl over the teabag and change color, he felt a sudden, dangerous surge of affection. The feeling burned away to ash in the rush of shame and self-loathing that followed. Sirius was fighting to protect Tonks from political enemies and threats to her identity, yet Remus himself was by far the most dangerous thing she had ever come into contact with. He shouldn’t even be here. It was a crime to put these people at risk, even the small risk that he represented during the moon’s darker days.

He needed to get back to work, searching through the books for a cure and hopefully also learning more about his new magical ability. Sirius and Tonks—Dora—were too charming. He kept letting them distract him from his research. Dora had already noticed his interest in the books, and had correctly guessed he was trying to break a curse. He had no reason to be clandestine any more. If he gave up the pretense of cleaning he could finish browsing through the rest of Sirius’ library in just a couple days. He would. Then he would leave.

But first he was going to go reassure the sick girl he had accidentally scared witless.


	6. In Which There Is a Stressful Birthday

**Day Nineteen**

 

 ****Squashing his feelings towards Sirius, which were no longer limited to physical desire, became more difficult with each passing day. Remus was almost relieved when Sirius caught the same illness as Dora and spent two days straight as Padfoot, dozing feverishly on the couch. Apparently Sirius really didn’t ever sleep in human form.

“He says he gets bad dreams,” Dora whispered when Remus asked her about it.

Remus had softened towards Padfoot since the night at the Blue Waste. Padfoot had invited himself into Remus’ narrow bunk to sleep several times since then, and Remus had surprised himself by not minding. Padfoot took up a lot of space, and he had a tendency to kick, but he was still a soothing presence. Remus would have much preferred to have the human Sirius in his bed, but as he was seldom offered comfort of any sort, he couldn’t help but accept what was offered.

During Sirius’ illness, he hardly changed back at all that Remus saw. He supposed it might be easier to bear  being sick as a dog, but it did leave Dora, who had only just recovered herself, with an unusual share of the responsibility in running the shop. Remus ended up helping her, despite his determination to stay focused on research. He was relieved when Sirius changed back on the morning of the third day. Sirius looked gray and rumpled, even after spending a whole hour in the bathroom with his various beauty products. He was obviously still sick, but his presence was necessary. This was not an ordinary morning.

“Happy birthday, little lemon.” Sirius’ smile was weary but genuine. Still, it was nothing compared to Dora’s glee when she saw her presents.

Sirius had nearly bought Dora a dress in the newest style, but Remus had scoffed at both the workmanship and the price, and offered to teach Dora to sew instead. Sewing was considered a woman’s skill here, and Remus was correct in his guess that Dora had only been allowed to learn men’s skills in the palace. She was delighted with the fabrics Sirius had picked out and even more excited about the idea of learning to sew. Apparently Sirius was no better at creating clothing with transfiguration than he was at mending it, thus her plain brown dresses.

Sirius also gave her a pair of elegant topaz earrings. They were simple drops the same shape as his own, but the stones were warm brown in contrast to his own cold gray ones. From the way she held the gems, eyes wide with quiet awe, they were clearly her first piece of jewelry, or at least her first piece of women’s jewelry. She must have worn many fine things as a prince. Remus was now convinced that they had both been quite pampered. The glittering gold spires of the palace on the other side of Kingsbury did not hint at austerity on the part of the royal family. He was impressed that they had managed to survive as well as they had in this relatively rustic house, with no servants to wait on them.

The most wonderful gift had to do with the door. Sirius had spent part of the early morning before Dora woke up messing with an object at the lintel of the door and painting over the black dot with blue paint. Now he opened the door with a flourish to show her a wide grassy meadow that surrounded the same lake she saw through her bedroom window. She jumped with delight. Remus didn’t understand the appeal at first, because after all she could get to Star Lake any time she wanted by climbing out her window, but then he realized that she took it as a sign that Sirius would not leave again, since the doorway to the battlefield was now gone.

They spent the first part of the morning chasing Padfoot around the shores of the lake, then Sirius cajoled Dora into sitting still long enough to have her ears pierced while Remus laid out drafting paper and other supplies on the work table.

“Wait,” she said, as Sirius removed the ice cube and brought the needle close. Her face froze as she concentrated. When Remus looked closely, he saw her ear change ever so slightly. It gained a little asymmetry that had not been present before and the skin darkened a shade. She had let her underlying appearance through, just enough to allow Sirius to pierce her ear as it was when she was not using her magic. This partial transformation seemed to be more difficult than her usual form, because her focus was so intense that she hardly blinked when Sirius deftly passed the needle through her earlobe. Once he had done both sides, she returned her ears to their normal state and surveyed the result in a hand mirror with satisfaction. “There. Now I won’t have to think about them. They’ll just be there.”

“I used to change back every night,” she explained to Remus as he showed her how to measure herself accurately. “It was so hard! But now I almost never change back at all, not even when I’m asleep.”

“Do you have to use your magic actively all the time? How do you avoid burning out?” Remus had just been reading in the _Balancing Energies_ book how difficult it was to control a small but steady flow of magic.

“It takes a lot of practice,” she said with easy superiority. “It’s like blowing a soap bubble. You have to put in just enough to make the bubble form, not too little or it won’t work, and not too much or it will pop.”

“That does sound difficult.” He wouldn’t need that kind of skill for his own magic. Once his spells were cast, they continued to exist without further energy expenditure until he removed them, or until someone like Sirius came along and transfigured them. Or, according to _Principles of Spoken Magic_ , until he died, at which point they would gradually fade. That was simpler on the face of it, but this semi-permanent magical ability weighed on him. He had a responsibility to keep track of all the spells he cast, especially if he planned to keep moving. He couldn’t know the long-term consequences of leaving spells behind. That was especially true with an obviously problematic spell like silencing Dora, but even something more subtle might prove inconvenient or dangerous years later if he was not around to remove it.

The _History of Soothsayers in Ingary_ book seemed to justify his fears. The author described soothsaying as inherently manipulative, and all the wizards in the book seemed to be evil in one way or another. Sirius said that was just superstition that no one believed any more, but Remus wasn’t convinced. His magic had come from the wolf, after all. It was only natural that it would be more of a burden than a blessing.

Sirius’ book choices had proved useful. Remus learned how magic was absorbed from the ambient environment and that a small portion of the population was resistant to soothsaying. _Principles of Spoken Magic_ called these people “bad listeners,” which Remus found amusing. Obviously it wasn’t linked to personality or Sirius and Dora would probably have been among that stubborn minority.

“Yes, it’s impressive, but not very interesting.” Dora waved her hand imperiously. “Continue with my lesson?”

Remus smiled. “I should have guessed about you a long time ago. Only royalty talks like that.”

“Royalty never does anything useful like learn to sew.” She rolled her eyes. “They wouldn’t ever let me make things.”

“Oh no, a good ruler should try to understand everyone in their charge. My grandfather was the chief of our village. He used to take it in turns to do the work of everyone else, even the women and children, so he could understand their lives.” Remus paused thoughtfully. “Although I suppose that would be difficult to accomplish with a population this large.”

“Not of you don’t take it literally,” Sirius spoke up unexpectedly from where he was slouched in his armchair in a feverish lump. “It’s just basic empathy. Human beings have a finite amount of time to go around pretending to be cobblers or soldiers or whatever, but there’s no finite limit on empathy.”

Remus pressed his lips together doubtfully. “I have yet to meet a human being with an infinite amount of empathy.”

If Sirius had a counter to that, Remus never heard it, because at that moment a tiny bell on the mantlepiece—which Remus had dusted around but otherwise never paid much attention to—began chiming a piercing, repeating note. Dora jumped in shock, sending the measuring tape and several other tools clattering to the ground. Sirius leapt from his chair as if he had been struck, cursing thoroughly.

“They’ve found us!” He glanced around wildly and snatched up the broom that had stood unused in a corner of the living room for as long as Remus had been there. He tossed it to Remus, who caught it by reflex only. “Take that and come on! Dora, you know what to do!”

“What’s going on? Who’s here?” Remus said.

Sirius was already hurtling up the stairs to the balcony that controlled the castle. He went so fast that he skidded sideways on the landing like Padfoot in a hurry. Remus barely kept up. He glanced behind him, but Dora was not following.

“Not who, what!” Sirius called back down the stairs. “Get up here!”

Remus stumbled as the stairs shifted under him. Sirius was already waking the castle’s legs. As Remus emerged into the cloudy midday light of the Waste, Sirius pushed the lever that controlled the castle’s forward motion down all the way to the floor, causing them to speed forward at a breakneck pace. Remus had spent many idle mornings watching Sirius move the castle as part of the regular routine, but he had never seen it go half this fast. The structure of the building rattled alarmingly behind him.

“None of that!” Remus scolded it. “If Sirius built you to go this fast, then you will do it smoothly and without scaring us! I’m sure such an excellent castle would never even think of falling apart!” The castle’s shudders and creaks quieted, but Remus heard the crash of dishes and potion bottles inside as Sirius rounded a large boulder. “And no letting things slide off the shelves either! I won’t have things breaking!”

That seemed to work, although it was exactly the kind of spell Remus would have to make sure he removed sooner rather than later. He had a feeling Sirius and Dora wouldn’t appreciate a home full of permanently indestructible objects, especially considering their fondness for destroying dishes.

“That’s good!” Sirius shouted over the roar of the wind. He was watching the empty moor behind them, hardly sparing a glance for the obstacles in front of him.

“Don’t crash!” Remus yelled in alarm, spelling his words to make it so.

“No, not me,” Sirius called back. He was still looking behind them more than forward, with the broom that usually stayed on the balcony tucked under his arm. “Can you do that to the castle itself?”

“Do what?” Remus said, but then abruptly he understood. “Listen here, castle! Show us how clever you can be. Go right around anything dangerous, but fast now!”

Cautiously, Sirius removed his hands from the ship’s wheel. It continued to turn back and forth in front of him as the castle moved independently around obstacles in the rocky terrain. Remus had never tried animating something before, but to his amazement it appeared to be working.

Sirius, who was lately charmed by each clever spell that Remus figured out, barely nodded his acknowledgment. Instead, he scanned the horizon behind them with his brows drawn together. Remus opened his mouth to ask again what was going on, but then he saw something flying in the distance and heard Sirius’ sharp intake of breath.

It appeared to be a flock of oddly shaped black birds. They flew in a straight line towards the overturned soil where the castle had been rooted the last few days, stationary during Sirius’ illness. They circled the castle’s resting place like vultures, but unlike vultures they also knotted up as if to converse.

There was something about them, about the way they moved, that made Remus uneasy. As he continued to watch, the uneasiness morphed into dread, a prickling vine that wrapped around his lungs. Whatever they were, they were not birds. That was clear even at this growing distance. Birds didn’t move like that. Birds didn’t flow from once place to another in the sky like oil on the surface of water.

The creatures abruptly broke apart from their tight knot and began to stream towards them.

“Fuck!” Sirius exclaimed in a rush, as if he had been holding his breath. “They’ve spotted us!”

He glanced towards the acceleration lever, as if checking that it was indeed set as fast as possible. That was a futile hope. Remus knew from the first moment he had seen those not-birds streaking across the sky that there was no chance of outrunning them. The things had already gained more than half the distance Sirius had put between them and the campsite.

Sirius seemed to know this as well. He pulled his broom out from where he had been gripping it under his arm and held it up as one would hold a sword, with the bristles waving in the wind above him. He planted his feet firmly on the decking. The hard, determined light in his eyes would have been enough to deter any threatening human or animal. But these were neither.

“They’re here for Dora,” Sirius said shortly. “Hit them with the broom.”

The things were close enough now for Remus to see that they were mostly mouth. Their jaws were hugely disproportionate to the rest of their body and hung down slackly from their faces—if one could call such a thing a face—showing off clusters of blade-like teeth. They didn’t have wings at all. Uneven numbers of limbs dangled from their black, misshapen bodies, each tipped with three long claws.

Remus looked at his broom. It was a spindly thing, like a broom a granny would use to gently admonish dustbunnies. About half the bristles were missing.

“Don’t you have anything else? A gun? What about the kitchen knives?” Remus glanced at the door to the castle. If he hurried, he might make it back with some knives in time to be of use.

“Those things won’t work, and neither will your magic. Use the broom. Don’t let them inside.” Sirius started to say something else, but then the creatures were upon them.

The first one in the line went straight for Remus’ head with five arms and fifteen claws outstretched in a bristly parody of an offered hug. He ducked. He felt the swish of air overhead as Sirius swung his broom, and dark liquid splashed down around him. Remus expected the salt-iron tang of blood, but it didn’t smell like that at all. He knew the scent, but had no time to identify it. When he looked up he was shocked to see, not a wounded monster, but empty air. The thing was gone, reduced to the black liquid now wetting his clothes and hair, as if it had simply burst. Clearly, these were no ordinary brooms.

Remus stood up, gripping his weapon with newfound confidence. He jabbed the bristles into another of the things that was closing on Sirius, and grimaced with satisfaction when it collapsed into a puddle on the decking. It was all quick, close work after that. Remus had a moment of gratitude that Sirius had chosen to enchant brooms, instead of knives or guns. Remus had never held a gun in his life, but he knew how to use a staff and a spear, and the broom served as both.

There seemed to be dozens of them, so many that Remus suspected they were multiplying. He was sure there hadn’t been this many when he had first spotted them. They swarmed around the castle, slithering along the rooftops and over the railing of the balcony towards them. They reached out their long claws to slash, but the broom gave Remus the advantage in reach. Once Sirius slid into place at his back, it was impossible for the things to get past their joined guard. Remus swung his broom over and over. The footing grew slick as the monsters were one by one reduced to liquid. Sirius kept them near the closed door, preventing the things from coming inside. It would be helpful to lock the door, Remus thought, but he was fighting so quickly, he didn’t have the breath to speak.

After some minutes of this, the monsters began to thin out. If they were multiplying, it was not an ability they could extend indefinitely, or perhaps they were simply discouraged with their lack of progress. Finally, a moment came where there was nothing left to swing at. Remus panted and wiped the creatures’ liquid from his face. It made a black smudge on his brown skin. Once he was given a moment to breathe, the smell of it clicked into place.

“This smells like ink!”

“That’s because it is ink.” Sirius was covered in it too. There were splotches on his face and arms, and his blonde hair was unevenly splattered with it. Other than that he appeared unharmed. “They’re transfigured from ink.”

“Did we get them all?” Remus peered around the corner of the roof. He couldn’t see any more—but then he heard a scream. 

“ _Dora!_ ” Sirius turned wildly back to the door, which was still firmly shut, but the scream was not coming from inside the castle at all. It was coming from the knot of monsters now rising above the roofline on the opposite side, from the terrified girl dangling in their midst.

Remus opened his mouth to say something, spell something, although he didn’t know what, but Sirius had already vaulted over the railing and onto the roof, growling with rage. As he ran over the slanting roof tiles, he changed, not into Padfoot, but into something much more terrifying. His arms elongated and multiplied into several misshapen, black limbs not unlike the ones the foul things had, only his were covered in black feathers. Wings sprouted forcefully from his back just in time as he launched himself off the edge of the roof in pursuit.

The things had been fast before, but now Dora’s struggles slowed them down. Sirius was on them in an instant, slashing into their huddle viciously with the broom, which he had brought with him and now held securely in his longest limb. They burst and fell in twos and threes, made easy targets by their determination to hang onto her.

As their numbers reduced, the knot lost altitude. Sirius pushed them away from Dora with his other arms, heedless of the claws and teeth ripping past his feathers. Four, five, six, of his limbs wrapped around her, and he jerked her away. Remus gasped in horror as they dropped suddenly, but then Sirius’ wingspan broadened and they rose back up, with Dora pulled close against his chest.

The struggle had grown distant as the castle continued to move away. Remus turned to grasp the wheel and bring it back around. Once he was close enough, he arrested the castle’s speed and let it circle beneath them. He thought about climbing onto the roof, but they were too high up for him to have a hope of being of assistance. He wasn’t sure they would even be able to hear him if he tried to cast a spell.

Now unburdened, the monsters were fast again, and they beset Sirius from all sides. The broom moved in a blur around him. Ink rained down on the castle and the surrounding countryside. Now removed from the midst of the struggle himself, Remus could see that they did indeed divide themselves, splitting into two and reforming. Their size was also divided in two when they did this, however, and they became smaller and smaller until they were no larger than songbirds. Thus reduced, they began to flee.

Remus expected Sirius to return to the castle then, at least to set Dora down, but he pursed them, following them across the sky and swatting them like flies until none remained. Only then did he come down to the balcony.

Sirius’ feet landed with an thump on the wood planking and his wings knocked against Remus in pursuit of balance, unsuccessfully. He fell sideways against the bricks of the chimney and slid to the floor with Dora still gripped tightly in his many limbs. He curled around her in a great ball of feathers, tucking her under his wings like some macabre, black, bloody mother hen. Remus couldn’t see either of them properly, but he could hear Dora’s terrified sobbing and Sirius’ laboring breaths.

“You’re all right, you’re all right.” Sirius’ voice was shaky with relief and exhaustion. “I’m so sorry! I should have made sure we kept moving. They didn’t hurt you? They’re gone, they’re all gone. How did they get in?”

“I was h-hiding,” Dora sobbed, “but I forgot to lock the bathroom window, I only closed it, and I went back, but they were th-there—”

“Just because it wasn’t _locked_?” Remus asked incredulously. “ _That’s_ how those things got in?”

He growled in frustration and ripped open the balcony door. He had just spend a good thirty minutes fearing for his life, and then watching Sirius risk _his_ life while those ink monsters dangled Dora over open air, because of a _lock?_

He pounded down the balcony stairs, across the main room, and up the other stairway to the bathroom, only half aware of Dora wobbling along behind him and Sirius shoving his transfigured self through the narrow passages behind her.

“Hey!” Remus slapped his hand on the window in question. He let out the full force of his fury on it. “What is your problem! What kind of window lets things like _that_ in, to attack the family you’re here to protect!” He opened and shut the window a few times, toggling the lock back and forth. It trembled a bit in his hands. Good. “So do your job! You are to keep things out! Weather and monsters both, and don’t let me hear about you failing at it again, locked or not! Do you understand me?”

Remus knew from the words he could hear echoing through the wooden frame that the window had indeed listened well. He huffed, still outraged, and shoved past the staring Dora and Sirius to vent the remains of his wrath on the other windows and doors, and after that, the walls. Just in case.

Eventually he ran out of things to yell at and blame. He was standing in the center of the living room, a bit dizzy from adrenaline, when a slight brush at his shoulder brought him back down to earth. It was Dora, ink-stained and dazed.

“That was a lot of magic,” she said. “Even I can see the one in the bathroom.”

“Oh. Thanks. What _were_ those things? How did they find you? How did they recognize you?” Dora’s normal face looked nothing like the face she buried underneath. Her skin, eyes, and hair were all different colors, and the bone structure was significantly changed as well. No one could have guessed who she was just by looking, and she was always Jenkins or Pendragon in public anyways.

“They look for magical signatures, not appearances,” Sirius said. “That’s why we keep moving, so if my mother decides to send them out, they won’t be able to find her trace in the ambient magic. It’s my fault,” he added to Dora. “I should have known she might try it on your birthday.”

“They come sometimes,” Dora whispered to Remus. “But they’ve never caught me before.”

She was trembling on her feet, obviously still in shock. Her hair, usually a bright, cheery pink, was heavily stained with black. It had mostly come out of the loose bun that she usually styled it in. Without thinking, Remus reached out and brushed some of it out of her eyes.

From across the room, Sirius cleared his throat. “Let’s get cleaned up. They’re gone now. And I doubt they could get in now anyways.”

He dug through the mess of broken flasks and spilled ingredients on the shelves until he found a large amber bottle.

“This will get it off our skin. Doesn’t help with hair though.” He raised his hand to his head and winced.

Dora squinted and blinked, as if she had sand in her eyes. The black in her hair faded and the normal pinkness was restored.

Sirius smiled shakily at her. “That’s my little lemon. Here, you go first.”

She took the bottle of cleanser from him and slowly climbed the stairs. The smile fell off Sirius’ face as soon as she turned away, replaced by tight misery. He collapsed into his armchair, with his many limbs piled awkwardly in front of him and his wings straining over the sides of the chair. He bent over, holding his head in his hands—the regular, unfeathered ones. His shoulders shook and his breath came unevenly. At first Remus thought he was crying, but then he saw the feathered limbs and wings shrinking. The mass slowly redistributed into his torso and shoulders, returning him to his usual top-heavy appearance.

Remus had seen Sirius change to and from Padfoot with ease many times. It was hard not to be jealous of the clearly effortless transition from man to canine and back. This was nothing like that. Sirius transformed back into his human self in fitful stops and starts. He gasped and trembled with the effort of it. It was forced, violent, painful, and unsettlingly similar to the transformations Remus himself suffered through. He had to look away, fighting a rush of sympathetic nausea, until he heard Sirius’ breathing even out. Sirius was still slumped forward in the chair with his face in his hands, but he was fully human once more. The feathers and unearthly limbs were gone, replaced by his square-shouldered checkered coat, which was sadly ripped from the slashing of the monsters’ claws. Cloth was not the only thing they had ripped. Remus could smell blood.

“You’re bleeding,” Remus said quietly. “Let me get the healing potion...”

“Don’t bother. I made them potion resistant.” Sirius grimaced as he shrugged gingerly out of the ruined coat. Blood was seeping through the sleeves of the white shirt underneath. It dripped from his elbows onto the arms of the chair.

“You? Did you make those things?” Remus pressed a kitchen cloth against one of Sirius’ arms, not knowing what else to use. He hadn’t come across any bandages when he was cleaning up. Perhaps there were still some in his pack.

Sirius barked out a hoarse, humorless laugh. “Of course I made them! What, do you think all I do is make potions and turn paper into dishes? I’ve made nearly every weapon and ship in this fucking war.” He pressed his coat against his other arm, trying to staunch the flow. “Now you know the truth about me, the only thing I’m really good at—destruction!”

He was shaking, unsteady from anger, residual fear, and—judging by the glazed look in his eyes and the warmth radiating up through the towel—fever. Remus shook his head, not sure what to make of this strange mood swing. He wasn’t feeling too steady himself. 

“Can you make a bandage?”

Sirius looked down at him in surprise, as if he hadn’t really noticed that Remus was kneeling there so close to him.

“Yeah. I can.” Sirius pressed his hands to his biceps and separated the sleeves from his shirt. He removed them, balled them up and pulled them apart, spreading the fabric and transforming it into two long white strips of bandage. He waved Remus off in irritation and wrapped the wounds himself. It was neatly done, as Remus would know, having had to practice this skill too often himself, but he was not gentle. Remus had to suppress the urge take over.

“I can’t believe I was so stupid!” Sirius burst out as he finished tying the last knot. “I should never have let us stay in one place for so long. Even two days is long enough for Dora’s draw to show up, and I let it go for—what? Four?”

“Three,” Remus said. He settled back on the purple couch, wincing a bit. He hadn’t been wounded himself, but the unaccustomed fighting had left him with a couple pulled muscles. “And if you were sick enough to lose track of time, you can go ahead and forgive yourself.”

“I should have at least reminded Dora to move us. Or you. Look at this!” Sirius waved his hand bitterly at the room, which was still rocking gently around them as the castle continued to move, guided by Remus’ spell. “I should have thought of this before, and the locks too. You’ve done more to protect her in the last hour than I’ve been able to accomplish in the last four years! No matter what I do...it’s just never going to be enough, is it? I’m just not good at this—this whole thing! We keep running, but she always finds us!”

He leaned his head against the back of his chair, staring feverishly at the ceiling. Remus pursed his lips. The attack had been scary, definitely, but Sirius was taking this all too personally. Remus would have thought his soothsaying today deserved gratitude, not jealousy. He was not inclined to humor these overdramatic fever-ravings.

He hadn’t realized before today that Sirius had a reason for moving the castle every day. He had assumed that Sirius was just the type who didn’t like to stop moving, not his body or the castle it lived in. Remus could relate to that, having been on the move himself for over a decade. But while Remus traveled with the meandering determination of a lone wolf, Sirius seemed to spin in circles, like a dog at the end of his leash.

“Well, you haven’t exactly run very far, have you?”

“No. I suppose not.” Sirius’ mouth turned down mournfully and he curled his legs up around himself in the chair. His blonde hair fell in chunks over his face, stuck together by black ink. Splashes of ink marred his usually pristine complexion, and blood was starting to bloom through the bandages.

“Let me try to heal you.” Remus had not had an opportunity to try any healing magic yet, and he should practice before the next full moon.

Sirius nodded, and Remus almost reached out to take his hand and look at his arms more closely before he remembered that he didn’t need to. His magic didn’t require touching. So he simply sat back on the couch and spoke.

“Sirius, you’ve protected her all these years, and you’ll continue to do what is best for her. You’re stronger than you realize. You’ll heal well and quickly.” He let the magic seep into his words only at the end of this, and watched as Sirius closed his eyes. He wondered what the spell would feel like to someone who only ever experienced magic tactilely. A rush of energy, a physical pressure? Pressure was what Remus felt, an unpleasant squeezing right behind his temple.

“Watch it, or you’ll burn out,” Sirius warned, seeing the pained expression. He ran his hands over his arms and peeled one bandage back far enough for them to inspect the wound. It was not healed, but the bleeding had stopped and scabs were beginning to form.

“Some spell.” Again, Sirius seemed more sullen than impressed. He obviously did not like having his spot as most powerful wizard in the house usurped.

“You’re welcome. And stop being so immature. This isn’t a competition.” Sirius had the grace to look ashamed at that, at least. “It’s no good indulging in moping. There’s a lot more to raising a child than spells. I could never have been as patient with her as you have been.”

“You’d be surprised,” Sirius said thoughtfully. “I never thought I could either. I bet you could have done it too, and better, if you had to.”

Overhead, the rushing water in the pipes stopped as Dora finished her shower. Sirius stood up, stretching his arms experimentally. “I’m going to clean up too. I should let Padfoot be with her. She won’t want to be alone after that.”

“Right.” Remus sighed, eyeing the blood-stained arms of Sirius’ chair. That would need to be cleaned. The whole room was a mess. He washed his face and hands in the kitchen sink as well as he could without Sirius’ special soap. He sighed at his hair, which was now crunchy with dried ink. It would take a while to put it to rights, but at least the color wouldn’t show up too much. For now, he bundled it under a cloth tied around his head and turned his attention to tidying up the broken glass and scattered herbs that littered the room. Apparently the spell he had cast to stop things from falling off the shelves had come too late. Nearly everything in the room was broken. Sirius would have a lot of transfiguring to do come tomorrow.

 He tried persuading Sirius’ blood not to stain the chair, but the stabbing pain in his temple escalated so sharply that he gave up the effort and settled for cold water. He shouldn’t do any more magic tonight, and probably not tomorrow either.

He had almost finished removing the post-earthquake-like mess from the room when he heard Padfoot’s claws go clicking across the upstairs hall to Dora’s room. He considered showering himself, but with Sirius as Padfoot again, there was no one else to keep an eye on the castle as it continued to dash across the moors. He had cast the spell hastily and didn’t trust it unsupervised for long. He could have turned the castle off manually, but he didn’t like the idea of stopping them, not with the smell of ink lingering everywhere and reminding him of those monsters. It was always safer to keep moving.

So he took a blanket up to the balcony and spent the long, lonely night in a light doze, keeping watch on the spell he was too tired to attempt to remove.

+++

“No!” Dora set her arms stubbornly and glared Sirius down.

Sirius sighed and rubbed his fingers over his dark eyebrows. After the ink monster attack, he had emerged from the bathroom with hair as black as Padfoot’s, and his once-blonde eyebrows and eyelashes were dark to match. Remus found this change highly disorienting. He was having to learn how to avoid staring all over again. Night-black hair made a eerie, otherworldly contrast with skin the color of dry bones, although according to Dora this was Sirius’ natural hair color. The blonde had been an affect, not the other way around. Remus was still trying to figure out which potion Sirius had used to make his end-of-day stubble grow in blonde, as it had always appeared before.

“You haven’t practiced in ages,” Sirius was saying. “Let’s just do a bit before lunch.”

Sirius’ other take-away from the ink monster encounter was that Dora should practice her sword work. Remus could understand his concern. As far as he had seen, Dora had not tried to fight back against the monsters at all. That was a dangerous attitude of helplessness for a girl being pursued by a wicked sorceress. Unfortunately, Dora did not seem to agree, and had gone as far as to stop eating breakfast to illustrate her obstinacy, a truly extreme measure since she seemed to be growing taller every day.

“I won’t! I hate training.” She scowled at him.

“I don’t care,” he said. “It’s not the first time those things came after us, and it won’t be the last. You need to know how to defend yourself. You _are_ going to practice today.”

“You can’t make me!” Dora’s scowl deepened to an extent that a non-metamorphmagus would not have been able to achieve, and she gave off the impression of being rooted to her stool.

“What’s wrong with practicing fighting?” Remus asked, trying to diffuse the situation. He didn’t like the idea of these two facing off.

“I hate it!” Dora repeated vehemently. She turned up her nose. “Girls don’t do that stuff.”

Sirius opened his mouth, perhaps to point out that most girls didn’t need to, but Remus beat him to it.

“Sure they do. Maybe not here, but they do in lots of other places I have been. Do you know, in Peichstan there are entire divisions of the army made up of women? And in Tsapfan all the palace guards are women because they believe women have the most dedication to any task.”

Dora’s scowl faded slightly, but she didn’t look convinced. “People must make them do that. That doesn’t mean they like it.”

Remus considered. “In Peichstan both men and women are expected to serve in the army for at least two years, so, no, they don’t get a choice. I’m not sure about the palace guards. They’re trained from when they are children, so I suppose it is really their parents making the decision. But that’s not always the case. In Inhico there are protection squads of women that beat pedophiles and other abusers with sticks. They’re definitely volunteers. Most of them are older women, grandmothers.”

“What’s a pedophile?” Dora asked, interested despite herself.

“An adult who has sex with children.”

“And they beat them up?” To Remus’ dismay, she didn’t seem surprised to hear that people did this, only that there were consequences. Her eyes grew wide and she pulled her plate back towards herself, seemingly without realizing it. He nudged the jam closer, trying not to think about the implications of her reaction. “Does it stop them?”

“It seems so. The squads are pretty violent about it. Some people won’t listen to anything else, you know.”

“That’s right,” Sirius said. “And Searchers transfigured from ink definitely don’t listen.”

Dora stiffened up again, reminded of her battle with him. Remus intervened before they could start arguing again.

“Well, I don’t blame you for not wanting to practice. A sword is a terrible weapon for you. What?” Sirius was glaring at him, obviously irritated by this lack of solidarity. “No woman carries a sword here. There’s no point training her to use a tool that she will never have on her when she needs to defend herself.” He turned back to her. “What you need is a knife, or maybe a staff.”

“Is that how you fight?” Dora asked.

Remus nodded. “That is how I fought off those things yesterday. A staff and a broomstick aren’t so very different.”

Dora considered this all throughout two pieces of toast and the last of the bacon. Through the use of subtle glares, Remus kept Sirius from pressuring her, until finally Dora wiped her fingers on her skirt and hopped off the stool.

“All right, you may teach me.”

+++

Remus retuned to the entrance of the castle where Sirius was waiting. They watched Dora run through the moves he had outlined for her. Remus leaned against the door frame, feeling the pleasant rush of exercise after too long being sedentary. The low, clinging mist of the Waste had lifted a little as the day got warmer, but there was still no blue sky to be seen.

“Thanks,” Sirius said. “Honestly, I really don’t care what weapon she learns, as long as it’s _something._ She had a broom, you know, in the bathroom, but she didn’t even grab it.”

“You’re being too hard on her. They surprised her. Maybe she just didn’t have a chance.”

“Maybe.” Suddenly Sirius smiled. “Look.”

Dora had changed her hair. It was still pink, but she had given it the dense, ringleted texture of Remus’ hair. She swung her head around experimentally, but it stayed in the loose ponytail she had styled her normal hair in that morning. She glanced up at them as if to see if they had noticed. Sirius raised his hand in acknowledgement. She grinned and returned to practicing.

“She really looks up to you,” Sirius said.

Remus shrugged. Dora was overly impressionable. That had been obvious ever since she had invited him to live with her on the same day they had met. It seemed that, having spent so much of her childhood without a kind parent to look up to, she was now willing to accept kindness from anyone that offered it, no matter how much of a stranger they were.

“You should stay,” Sirius said quietly. “I mean, really stay. With us.”

Remus looked past Dora out at the rolling moorland hills, towards the east. They had left the Blue Waste far behind, but it still lurked at the back of his mind, along with the ominous waxing of the moon.

“No, I have to keep moving. Soon.”

“Why?” Sirius leaned against the doorframe opposite him. Their feet were nearly touching. It was as close as they had come since that day several weeks ago when Sirius had first rebuffed him. Sirius’ eyes were halfway closed, relaxed, still watching Dora. Remus couldn’t help but feel his presence as a soothing aura instead of as the warning sign it should have been, so much so that before he realized it, his mouth opened. He almost answered.

He stepped out of the doorway abruptly, horrified. What would he have said? He never willingly told anyone the real reason for his wandering, and he couldn’t believe he had considered doing so now, even subconsciously. He turned away without responding at all, shaking a little around the pounding of fear in his heart, and went to poke through the books again.

He promised himself that from now on that was all he would do, that he wouldn’t let himself be sucked into their cozy camaraderie, but as the days went by he kept faltering in his goal. There were some days when he didn’t read at all. He cooked biscuits and curry and roast chicken. He learned new potion recipes. He spent hours refining the charms that controlled the castle, teaching it what to do if it should encounter a city, or a cliff, or a storm, or a flock of birds, until it was nearly sentient and started to surprise him. He continued practicing staff work with Dora. He smiled at Sirius too often and spent long evenings chatting with them both by the fire, snug in the wingback chair with the horrible springs that he and Sirius, with their combined skills, had been able to fix.

He was fooling himself, and he knew it. That didn’t make it any easier to stop.


	7. In Which James Brings a Letter That No One Appreciates

**Day Twenty-Six**

 

Remus still had not finished his research, still had not left, when there was a knock at the Kingsbury door two days before the full moon. Sirius was up on the balcony with his morning tea—the castle didn’t need supervision on its morning jaunts anymore, but Sirius liked to be present anyways—so Remus answered it.

It was a youngish man with light brown skin, curly hair and round glasses. He wore a coat with square shoulders not unlike Sirius’, but it was the pointy gold hat scrunched up in his hand that truly gave him away as a wizard.

“Who the fuck are you?” the man blurted out as soon as the door was open.

Remus stared at him, wondering if he would apologize or take back his hasty words, but the stranger showed no sign of regret for his rudeness.

“I’m Remus,” he replied at last.

“Are you _living_ here?” The man gestured at Remus’ bare feet incredulously.

“I’m visiting,” Remus said coldly.

“ _Visiting?_ ” The wizard’s eyes widened in outrage. “He won’t let me spend a single night!”

Ah. This must be one of Sirius’ many jilted lovers. He was not the first to come calling, but he was the first that was not a woman.

“Well, I’m not sleeping with him,” Remus explained.

“You’re not?” The man seemed to find this hard to believe. “Then what are you doing here? Are you a wizard?”

“No. I mean, yes,” Remus corrected himself. He wasn’t used to thinking of himself that way. It had only been ten days since he had found out, after all.

“...Right.” The wizard rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Where’s Sirius? I’ve got mail from his box at the Academy.”

Remus peered down at the envelopes with interest. They were addressed to Sirius Black, at the Ingarian Academy of Magic. Perhaps that was Sirius’ registered address. Sirius never got mail here, only Jenkins and Pendragon. He must be trying to hide his presence in the castle to protect Dora’s secret. Remus thought he recognized the royal seal on the top envelope.

“I can take it for him,” he offered.

“Oh no you can’t!” The man pulled the envelopes out of reach. “I didn’t travel for half a day just to hand them off to his latest lover.”

“I told you, I’m not his lover!”

“Uh huh. Sure. You’re a ‘visiting wizard.’”

Remus glared. He was just considering what kind of spell he should put on this annoying man—temporarily of course—to show him he wasn’t lying, when Sirius came down from the balcony.

“James! I thought I—” The welcoming grin fell off Sirius’ face when he saw the envelope in the wizard’s hand.

“Sorry, mate.” James grimaced. “Dunno what it is, but I figured I’d better bring it over right away. You’re the only one that got one though, so maybe it’s not what it usually is...”

He shouldered his way around Remus and up the entry stairs to the main room. Remus huffed in irritation but let him pass. He returned to the pan that was currently sizzling with breakfast, watching the two wizards out of the corner of his eye.

Sirius took the pile of mail and opened the one with the seal, sparing only a glance for the other envelopes. James leaned in to read the letter with no regard for personal space, close enough that the frame of his glasses rubbed against the shoulder of Sirius’ coat. Whatever was on the paper turned Sirius’ face as stiff as stone, although James looked a bit relieved.

“Just me, then,” Sirius said quietly. “I suppose I should have expected it, after the other day. The Searchers were here, you know. She must be getting suspicious.”

Remus raised his eyebrows and tried to give the impression of being absorbed in his cooking. Had the ink monsters given away Dora’s hiding place? Sirius had killed them all, so they shouldn’t have been able to take a message back to the Regent. But perhaps the simple fact that they had been destroyed was enough to make her suspicious of Sirius’ involvement. It also did not escape Remus’ notice that James was apparently privy to all of this information.

“Oh, that’s rotten luck,” James said with sympathy. He glanced over at Remus and lowered his voice further. “Hey, why don’t we go out? She’ll be awake soon, and she always freaks out. Let’s go to that place in the south district, just for a few hours...”

His fingers curled around Sirius’ wrist, under the sleeve. Remus tried not to bristle. It wasn’t any of his business, he reminded himself. To his relief, Sirius shook his head.

“Because of _him_?” James hissed, obviously meaning Remus. He was quiet, but not so much so that Remus, who may or may not have just cast an eavesdropping spell on his own ears, couldn’t hear him.

Sirius shook his head again. He looked truly stricken by the letter, which Remus supposed must be a summons to the palace. “No. I just don’t want to go out. How are things going with Lily?”

“Oh.” James shuffled his feet awkwardly. A grin flickered around the corner of his mouth, although he was clearly trying to suppress it in this solemn situation. “Actually, we’ve started sort of...going out. A bit.”

“Then why are you even asking?” Sirius moved away from James a half-step, letting his wrist slide out of James’ grasp.

The nervous smile faded from James’ face, and his voice seemed to sag. “I don’t know. I’m just...worried about you.”

“What is he doing here?” All three men turned to Dora, who was finally awake. She eyed James warily as she descended the stairs. Then she saw the letter in Sirius’ hands. “No, no, no!”

She dashed across the room, knocking over two of the workbench stools on her way, and grabbed the letter. Any doubts Remus might have had about the nature of its contents were erased by Dora’s raging scream when she read it. Remus winced and removed the amplification spell from his ears with a quiet mutter.

“No! You can’t go!” She pulled desperately on Sirius’ coat, as if she would physically pin him down and prevent him from leaving. “Not again!”

“I told you!” James said callously, as Dora’s yells rapidly evolved into hysterical sobbing.

“Dora, please, don’t—” Sirius tried, but he didn’t seem to know what to say. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, supporting her weight enough to keep her from dragging on his coat. He looked desperately up at the ceiling, as if trying to swallow tears, but as usual his eyes were dry.

“Right, I’m out of here,” James had to yell to be heard. “Keep me updated, all right?” Neither of them paid him any attention as he left.

“You can’t leave me again!” Dora sobbed. “Please!”

“I-I don’t have a choice!” Sirius protested. “I’m sorry, please don’t cry...”

He tried to pick her up, as if she were a much younger child, but she eeled away from him, collapsing to the floor and crying hard. He followed and wrapped his arms around her. His shoulders heaved and his face crumpled where she couldn’t see it. Remus watched him struggle for control for several minutes and then abruptly give up. He transformed into Padfoot.

Dora did not appreciate this. She howled and lashed out at him with her fists and legs. Padfoot cowered under the blows.

“Dora, don’t!” Remus pushed the breakfast pan off the heat and rushed over to pull her away from the dog. She struggled with him, trying to break out of his grasp. He did his best to catch her hands without retaliating, as Sirius had done at the plate pit. It was a horrible task. She seemed to be all bony elbows and lashing limbs. She could have gotten away if she had changed her form, but she seemed to lack either the composure or the will to change.

Fortunately, the violent part of her tantrum was short-lived. She wilted in his arms with a hopelessness that he found even more disturbing than the blows. She bent over double and sobbed into the sleeve of his shirt, now as limp as a cooked noodle. He gathered her up as gently as he could and rocked them back and forth, like she was a baby. The distress of helplessness fluttered in his own chest.

He didn’t understand how Sirius could keep leaving. Dora was thirteen, barely, but she was by no means an adult. She was able to care for herself as far as the logistics went, but emotionally...there was something sharp and wounded inside her that came out at times like this. She needed someone to look after her. It wasn’t good for her to be alone.

Remus’ heart convulsed with a parallel pain. His own secret had shoved him away from his family with a brutality that still hurt, even after all these years. There had been no question of him staying with his family. He was destined to solitude, but it didn’t have to be that way for Dora.

He wiped his own tears off his cheeks with his shoulder and raised his head to glare at Padfoot, who had slunk away around the corner of the couch.

“Get over here!” Remus growled. Padfoot whimpered and crawled over on his belly, tail between his legs. “This is no time for hiding behind furniture. Change back, right now!” he ordered.

Padfoot shifted and reformed, until it was Sirius who was sitting shamefaced on the floor. Dora lunged out of Remus’ lap and threw herself at him. Remus expected another explosion of blows, but she just clung to him with all the determination of a starfish attempting to crack open a mussel. She was still crying in a wordless, hysterical howl that hurt Remus’ ears. She had the desperate energy of a toddler, but the lungs of a person nearly full-grown. Sirius winced at the volume, but he let himself be engulfed. His eyes went back and forth between the top of Dora’s head and the letter, which lay crumpled near the hem of her skirt.

Remus picked it up to read. It was short, formal, and lacking in detail. It said simply that Sirius was to come to the palace to receive new tasks from the Regent, with no hint as to what those tasks might be or how long he would have to be there. It was only a few sentences long and not, in Remus’ opinion, terribly motivating or urgent-sounding. He sucked his teeth in disgust.

“This doesn’t seem like that big of a deal,” he said, tossing it aside. “Just don’t go.”

Sirius was watching him with a strange, almost hungry intensity. “You...you think I should ignore it?”

Remus paused, a bit taken aback by the odd look in Sirius’ eyes. “You don’t _want_ to go, do you?”

Dora had swallowed her sobs enough to hear what they were saying. Remus’ question made her whimper and dig her nails into the sleeve of Sirius’ coat.

“No!” Sirius said, first to her, and then to Remus. “No, of course not!”

“So why do you keep going?” Remus asked.

Sirius’ lips tightened in a thin, pained line, but he didn’t say anything.

“He never tells me why,” Dora growled resentfully.

Remus frowned. Sirius was obviously opposed to the war, and just as clearly had no loyalty to his mother. The Regent must be manipulating him somehow. Could it be some form of blackmail? Remus sighed. More secrets.

“Aren’t there about a million other options? Surely if you can do this—” he gestured around them to the castle Sirius had built, “—you can stand up to her. Or just use it to run away!” They could travel beyond the reach of any blackmail, no matter how ruining.

“Oh, yes, please, let’s run away!” Dora separated her face from Sirius’ damp shirt to look up at him pleadingly. Her face was red and swollen from crying. “Let’s go far, far away, so she’ll never be able to catch us again!”

Sirius still didn’t answer her. He pulled her head back down and pressed his cheek against her hair, staring with mournful blankness through the Kingsbury window at the red bricks of the building opposite them.

If what Sirius had told James was right, and the Regent suspected that he knew Dora’s location, then returning to the palace would make him vulnerable to questioning and put her in danger. Remus couldn’t understand why Sirius, who was so overprotective that he wouldn’t let Dora leave the castle unless she was disguised as Jenkins or Pendragon, would accept that risk. Yet he had, over and over again.

When Sirius finally spoke, his voice was thick with emotion. “You think I should stay?”

“Yes!” Dora said urgently, but Sirius was watching Remus. The hungry look was back, and this time Remus recognized it. This was how Sirius had looked at him a few weeks ago when Remus had scolded him for his disastrous romantic encounters. He was not simply asking, but begging for advice about a problem that needed only a bit of common sense to solve.

Remus frowned, puzzled anew by how completely and immediately Sirius had taken his advice to heart back then. He hadn’t slept with anyone since, for nearly a month, which Remus gathered was quite unusual. He hadn’t even considered James’ offer, even though James appeared to be in love with someone else, and his heart was therefore, at least in theory, safe from Sirius’ whims.

Remus’ eyes widened, trying to remember exactly how he had spoken to Sirius that night. Had he cast a spell, without realizing it? He didn’t think so. He looked Sirius over appraisingly. They had rarely come close enough for Remus to hear if Sirius had any magic clinging to him, but surely Sirius wouldn’t have let that level of meddling slide. He would have said something, long before the incident with the coat.

“Have I cast any spells on you?” Remus asked, just in case.

“No.” The intense look sharpened, becoming nearly desperate now. “You haven’t cast any spells on me.”

There was an inflection in his words that Remus didn’t quite understand, and he was still contemplating it when Sirius prompted him again.

“You think I should ignore it? Do nothing?”

Remus sighed. Sirius was trying to tell him something, something that he wouldn’t or couldn’t say plainly, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. “That’s what I would do.”

“Please stay, please!” Dora pleaded with him again. “I never know when she’ll let you come back, and what if—what if she doesn’t at all!” She hiccuped a sob at the end of this, still deep in the grasp of a fear that Remus thought was entirely reasonable.

If the Regent believed Sirius was still attending the Academy, as James’ visit implied, that was not a very compelling occupation, not compared to her obsession for making war. Even if Sirius were never fatally injured in a battle, Remus didn’t see any reason why the Regent might, someday, decide he shouldn’t go back to “the Academy” at all. And wouldn’t it be a huge damper on the war itself, if Sirius were to stay away? If there was no one to make the Regent’s machines of destruction, perhaps the war would end.

Sirius was the architect of the Regent’s war machines, but he also participated in the battles themselves. He had been injured last time. Remus had never seen the injuries, but he had an image in his mind of black feathers, slick with blood, and someone had drunk a dose of Healing potion the night he had returned. It was a miracle Sirius had been able to survive so many repetitions of this dangerous pattern. It was only a matter of time before he sustained a wound severe enough to kill him before he could get to some Healing potion. There were dozens of reasons for Sirius to stay away from the palace, and no reason that Remus could see for him to go.

“You think I should stay?” Sirius asked again, as if Remus had not just answered that question.

“I think you should stay,” Remus repeated. He was careful to speak without any inflection of magic. He still wasn’t sure if he had cast a spell on Sirius before or not, but he didn’t want to make the same mistake now. He couldn’t make Sirius stay, or rather he _could_ , but he didn’t want the responsibility for such an important decision.

Sirius sighed in apparent frustration, but he pulled Dora closer. His next words were almost lost in her hair. “All right.”

“Really?” Dora pushed away from his chest, voice high with hope. “You’ll stay, really you will? Promise?”

Sirius swallowed. “I—I’ll try.”

Dora squealed with delight and wrapped her arms around his neck. Sirius smiled tentatively and hugged her back. Remus smiled a little too, but inside he was troubled, by the unwarranted trust Sirius put in him, by the flicker of fear in Sirius’ eyes, and by all the things he still did not know.

+++

It was hard to gauge the sincerity of this half-promise, because Sirius spent most of that day as Padfoot, only changing back for trips to the bathroom and for a midday meal, where his falsely bright attitude did nothing to soothe Dora’s continuing anxiety. She plainly feared he would not do as he had said.

Dora was once again left with the responsibility of running the dual shops as Jenkins and Pendragon. In her nervousness, she knocked over countless glass jars and dropped coins when customers tried to pay her. The floor was soon strewn with mixed powders and dried herbs. Remus cast a surreptitious spell to keep ingredients from exploding on contact, as some of them tended to do. It was a wonder the castle hadn’t burned down years ago.

He forced himself to resist the urge to help her, despite the desperate looks she gave him when customers began to line up three deep or when she misplaced a product. He ignored her and made himself focus on the books. He had procrastinated long enough. He had only three days and two nights left before the transformation. He would need nearly half that time to put distance between himself and the castle, so he would have to make himself leave by tomorrow morning at the latest.

He leafed through countless volumes. There were books on transfiguration and mechanical engineering, potions and wild plants, history and legend. He learned how to make a salve for minor wounds, how to recognize local mushrooms, and how to poison both humans and werewolves a dozen different ways. Each book was a roller coaster of hope, disappointment, and renewed hope. There were no obvious cures, but werewolves were unusually well represented, probably due to Sirius’ interest in both transfiguration and dogs. Remus was haunted by the prospect of useful information that might be in the next book, on the next page...but so far a true answer had not presented itself.

He put the books back on the shelves as he read them, but made no attempt to hide what he was doing as he worked his way systematically around the room. Dora gave him anxious glances, but he brushed off her questions. If Padfoot noticed, he gave no sign. He spent the day in typical lethargy, sleeping on the purple couch.

Near the end of the day, Dora knocked over a bottle of light green powder. It dispersed into the air, and Remus saw stars when he inhaled.

“Enough!” he snapped. He threw down his current book. A few choice words opened the doors and the kitchen window and sent fresh air rushing into the room. Dora’s current customer, a young servant boy here on behalf of a Kingsbury mistress, startled from the unexpected magic and ran away without the contraceptive potion he had been sent for.

“We’re done here.” Remus flipped the signs on the main windows to “closed,” to the disappointment of a few young women who had just made to open the Kingsbury door. Remus shooed them away with an annoyed gesture.

“Sorry,” Dora said. She shifted out of her Pendragon guise and pulled the pointed hat off her head with a sullen look. “It’s hard when I have to change back and forth over and over. I lose track of how big I am.”

“I don’t blame _you_.” He glared at Padfoot, who remained oblivious. He didn’t even open his eyes, although his ears twitched, and Remus knew he had heard.

“Can we have dinner?” she asked timidly, when he showed every sign of returning to his work.

Remus rested his forehead against the bookshelf in front of him. It wasn’t like he was the only one who could put food in her mouth. They had both managed somehow before he arrived. They would have to manage again without him soon.

He sighed and hid his face with his hands, trying to swallow the sudden storm of feelings threatening to overtake him. He had already stayed too long. Sirius and Dora were a strange little family, but they shared a belonging that he could never have, no matter how he yearned for it. There was no use pretending it was otherwise. He shoved down all his longing and went to cook one last dinner.

He should have cooked something fast, the bare minimum, but the sight of the vegetables arrayed on the counter calmed him, as did Dora’s appreciative face when the scent of onions and spices frying in oil began to permeate the room. He ended up cooking her favorite meal: fragrant chicken curry and yeasty flatbread.

To Remus’ surprise, Padfoot didn’t join them, choosing to continue his nap instead. It was not until after dinner, when Remus was scrubbing the pots, that he stirred at all. He heaved off the couch and lumbered down the steps to the front door. He pressed his shaggy head against the doorjamb and whimpered softly.

Remus wiped his soapy hands and pointedly turned the knob to the blue dot for Star Lake before opening the door. Padfoot looked mournfully at the knob, but Remus just raised his eyebrows, unsympathetic. If Sirius wanted to go to Kingsbury that badly, he would have to change back and turn the knob himself.

Padfoot sighed heavily and plodded out into the fresh spring grass. He didn’t go anywhere or do anything in particular. He just stood in the grass a few feet from the door, head raised into the wind. The moonlight silvered his fur, and Remus shuddered a little. He didn’t like to be out at night when the full moon was so close.

He was just about to give up on waiting out Padfoot’s pointless canine errand when the dog turned and trundled back inside. Padfoot looked at the ten or so entry stairs to the main room as if they were an insurmountable obstacle. He put one paw up, then seemed to change his mind and simply lay down where he stood on the small landing in front of the closed door.

Remus huffed and nudged Padfoot’s side with his foot, trying to induce the dog to move, but what he felt gave him pause. Padfoot was very warm, even for a dog covered in ten solid inches of fur. Remus knelt down to look at him more closely. Padfoot licked his hand once, but other than that was alarmingly unresponsive. His eyes were glassy, and he was positively radiating heat.

“Are you all right?” Remus kept his voice low, not wanting to alarm Dora. “You don’t look so good. Change back, will you?”

Sirius changed back obediently. He sat uncomfortably on the floor, with his head leaning against the wall behind him. From that angle he met Remus’ eyes. His eyes looked distant from a resurgence of fever. The skin around his mouth was tight, as if there was a grimace lurking somewhere underneath.

“You’re sick again, aren’t you?”

Sirius swallowed. It seemed to take a lot of effort.

“Stay?” he whispered.

Remus glanced behind him at the couch where Tonks had been lounging. She was kneeling up and craning her neck to see them over the high back of the couch. When she saw Sirius was still there she settled back down, pinching her lip with worry.

Remus turned back to Sirius. “Why do you keep asking me that? Of course you should stay! And now you have a good excuse. Just send a note saying you’re sick.”

Sirius’ breath rushed out of him in a soundless laugh. “Won’t work.”

Remus frowned. “Why not? What will she do?”

Sirius didn’t answer. He had already bracingly sucked in his breath, and then he was Padfoot again. He lumbered slowly up the stairs and laid himself in front of the fire. Dora left her preferred spot on the couch and curled up next to him on the rug, draping her arms around his huge side.

She refused to go up to bed, or even move to the couch to sleep. She insisted on staying with Padfoot, and Padfoot showed no intention of moving. Remus gave up on trying to persuade her after a while and sat in his chair—when had he started to think of it as _his_ chair?—with a stack of books. It didn’t take her long to fall asleep, with Padfoot as her pillow.

Remus was not going to bed either, not now. He still had dozens of books to get through. Unfortunately, after nearly a month of early mornings spent with Sirius on the balcony, or cleaning, or cooking breakfast, he was not used to staying up late. He nodded off when he was only halfway through the stack. It was midmorning by the time he woke up, and it was to the sound of Dora screaming.


	8. In Which Sirius Is Selfish and There Is a Lot of Magic

**Day Twenty-Seven**

**In Which Sirius Is Selfish and There Is a Lot of Magic**

_I’m so sorry, but I just can’t do it. Especially not when I know in my heart this is the right thing to do. Remus can take you away from here and protect you better than I ever could. I hope someday you will both understand. Please be careful. Hopefully one day, when you are fully grown, we can see each other again. I might be able to help you then._

_Goodbye,_  

_Sirius_

_P.S. If you run out of money again, look in the black chest in the attic. It’s stuff I took from the palace that I have been selling off bit by bit. It’s yours anyways._

 

Remus expected Dora to scream and sob like before, but after the first shocked noise she was silent.

“But he can’t just leave,” she whispered. “He always comes back. Always.”

“Stupid, selfish—” Remus growled. He crumpled the note and threw it into the unlit fireplace. He should have realized how much Sirius’ apparently _extremely fragile_ ego had been injured by the charms he had put on the castle and the other ways he had helped Dora. So he thought Remus could do a better job keeping her safe? Ha! He could dispel that theory with a single revelation. The wolf always came back, and the wolf didn’t protect anyone. It ate them.

Of course, Sirius might kill him on the spot if he knew the truth. Hopefully he could be convinced another way, although in his current mood Remus wasn’t even sure he would care. One less werewolf in the world was ultimately a good thing.

He hadn’t finished looking through the books, but it was too late now. He had procrastinated too much, and he would have to pay the price. He had traded a real possibility at finding a cure for time spent tidying a house he would never live in and cooking meals for people he would never see again.

“What are you doing?” Dora asked when she saw him shoving the few things he owned into his pack. She seemed to be in a daze. She had hardly moved since he had snatched the letter from her hands.

“I’m leaving.” Remus cinched the drawstring shut and swung the pack onto his shoulders. “And on my way I’ll go to palace and convince him that this is the stupidest idea he’s ever had. Don’t worry, I’ll make him come back.”

He glanced at the food piled on the counter, but quickly discarded the idea of taking some. He could survive on what he found. Sirius might not be able to return right away, and Dora would need food. Dora, however, appeared to have other ideas. She was already pulling on her boots. “I’m going with you.”

“You can’t come!” he protested. “It’s too dangerous. What if those ink things are there? They’ll find you!”

“I am too coming! You need me.” She stood tall, then, upon consideration, made herself a little taller, until they were eye to eye. 

Remus, looking down at her elongated, emaciated form, was not impressed. “I do _not_ need you. You need to stay here.”

“I’ll help you convince him to come back!” She set her feet stubbornly.

“You’ll be no help at all. You haven’t been able to convince him to stay once in—how many years? You won’t do any better now.” That was a nasty thing to say, but he was in a nasty mood. He was already aching, stretched thin from the proximity of the full moon, and this was all his own stupid fault. He should never have stayed so long and let himself be inserted into their inexplicable dramas. “You’ll just get caught or get in my way!”

“I will not!” Dora’s eyes sparked with a nearly literal fire. “You’ll be useless without me! The palace is huge. You won’t know where to go, but I grew up there. I know where he’s likely to be. Besides, I have _this_.” She held up her hand triumphantly, showing off a small silver ring that she had always worn but he had never given much notice. It had a tiny blue-gray stone, hardly larger than a few grains of sand. “This is a magic ring. It will show me _exactly_ where he is. _You_ may come along if you like, even though you are being very rude, only because your magic is useful sometimes. Then _I_ will convince Sirius to come back, and we’ll run away forever.”

She spoke with the haughty steadiness of someone who had been raised to believe she should be in charge. She clearly thought her plan was foolproof. He narrowed his eyes at her and the little silver ring. There was no way he was letting her come along. He was sure she would either cause or get into trouble. She was too young, too unpredictable, and—most importantly—he was too attached to her. He was too attached to both of them. He had to detach himself as soon as possible, and he couldn’t do that with her tagging along pulling on his heartstrings.

He knew what he had to do. It wouldn’t be the most terrible thing he had ever done—he had done some truly awful things over the years—but it would rank close.

“You’re right,” he said, letting magic saturate the words, “I do need that ring. Give it to me.”

She pulled it off her finger and handed it to him without a moment of hesitation. He slipped it onto his smallest finger. He had hardly finished doing so when she tackled him with a furious roar, trying to take it back. She knocked him off balance, and they went crashing down the entry stairs.

“Stop!” he ordered, and she did. He shoved her off of him and stood over her, panting. The spell kept her immobile, but she was practically hissing at him in her rage.

“You—you are the worst person ever! You said you wouldn’t cast spells on me! You promised!”

“I don’t think I did.” Even if he had, he wasn’t about to let her get captured or killed because of something like that.

“You don’t even know how to activate it! It won’t do you any good!”

“I’ll figure it out,” he said wearily. “You don’t need to stay frozen after I leave, but the door will lock behind me. And you won’t be going out that window either,” he added, seeing her glance tellingly at the Kingsbury window.

“I hate you!” She spat, literally. It made a small dark spot on his trousers. “I can’t believe Sirius wanted you to take care of me, because I would never let you live with me, ever!”

“Then we are in agreement,” Remus said bitterly. “Goodbye.”

“You’ll be sorry!” she screamed as he made to open the door. “I was right about you from the beginning! You’re an evil criminal! I’ll tell Sirius what you did, and he’ll hunt you down and kill you!”

Remus barked a laugh that was nearly a sob. “Tell him to wait three days. Then he can do whatever he wants.”

He closed the door behind him and amended the spell so it would only keep her in for a few days. He didn’t want to trap her forever.

The rounded multicolored spires of the palace rose above the buildings and pieced the low cloud cover to the south. They looked deceptively close, but he knew it was several miles to the palace, which was all the way on the other side of the city. He didn’t mind the walk. He had a lot of calming down to do, and a lot of soothsaying.

He took out the cloak he had made for himself last week and began to lecture it about how unnoticeable it would make him, how well it would make him fit in wherever he went. He couldn’t convince it to make him completely invisible, as that was too far outside of the nature of clothing. Clothing did, however, have an important role in telling people who you were and where you belonged. After nearly an hour of talking and walking, he was confident it would provide him a significant level of camouflage, especially if he stayed still or didn’t draw attention to himself.

He tested it in a bakery. He slipped behind the counter and through the kitchen without anyone giving him a second glance. He took one of the warmest morning buns and left a few coins in its place. Once he had finished eating, he stepped into an alley to examine the ring.

“All right, little ring. It’s time to put this family back together. Let’s see what you can do. Show me Sirius.”

The ring spun rapidly around his finger three times, and then the little stone made a narrow line of light. It reminded him of the beam of a keyhole lantern, but it was no wider than a strand of thread. It pointed towards the brick wall in front of him, in the direction of the palace. He turned his hand around, but it remained pointing towards the wall like a compass pointing north.

“So that’s how it’s going to be, huh?” He had expected it to show him a vision of Sirius where he currently was, but perhaps this would be more useful when navigating an unfamiliar, complicated building. “You are a handy little thing, aren’t you? Keep this between us, please. I don’t want anyone else to see your light.”

The ring seemed to obey, or perhaps the enchantments on his cloak were strong enough to cover it as well. None of the people he passed seemed to notice anything unusual.

The Regent was not running a people-friendly country. The palace gates were closed to all common folk, but of course Remus was not common and he belonged inside, or so he explained to the guards at the side entrance, who promptly saluted and opened the gate. The security systems here had obviously not taken soothsayers into account.

From the courtyard the ring pointed clearly towards the southeast wing of the palace, so he went in on that side. There was another guard there, but Remus walked briskly past without a word, letting his cloak speak for him.

It was much more complicated once he got inside. The ring seemed to point in Sirius’ true direction regardless of walls, and it was difficult to tell which room, or even which floor, he should be looking on. To make things worse, the palace was a grand maze and some sections didn’t seem to be connected at all, except perhaps by servant’s passages, which were well-hidden enough that Remus had trouble finding them.

“A map would be ever so useful,” he suggested to the ring, to no avail.

He was contemplating this puzzle, watching his hand as he walked, when he bumped right into someone. Someone tall and unusually broad-shouldered, with a diamond-checkered coat. Sirius.

Sirius blinked in confusion until Remus pulled off his hood and tossed his cloak back over his shoulders, then his eyes widened in recognition. “Remus? What are you doing here?”

“Asking you what _you_ are doing here!” Remus hissed. “I thought you were going to stay.”

“I—didn’t you get my note?” Sirius didn’t meet his eyes. Clearly, he was a bit ashamed of himself, as he should be.

“Yes. Funny, you made a pretty big assumption that I would stay with her. Maybe next time you should ask before giving someone a child like a holiday present! I am not going to stay, so you had better go back. Sooner, rather than later, because she’s mad as can be, which I would say is pretty justified!”

“No, Remus, no.” Sirius raised his hands palm up, pleading. “I can’t keep doing this. You have to take her with you. Take the castle and go! She’ll be safe with you.”

“No, she won’t! I can’t take care of her, Sirius. I am leaving.” Remus set his arms stubbornly, ready to settle in for a long argument. He hadn’t expected Sirius to be easy to convince, after all.

“Yes, you can! You’re better at it than me anyways.”

Remus rolled his eyes. This again. “So do it better! She’s not just an apprentice, and you know it. You’re like family to her, and family doesn’t get to leave! She doesn’t want me, she wants _you._ ”

“Then she’s wrong!” The words burst forcefully from Sirius’ mouth, and Remus had to glance around to make sure they weren’t being observed. “The only thing putting her in danger anymore is me!”

Remus threw his hands in the air in frustration. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about!”

“Please, _please,_ Remus, just take her away!” Sirius raised his hands like he would grip Remus’ shoulders as he pleaded, but then he pulled his hands away. Remus’ scowl deepened. Sirius didn’t even want to touch him. He never did, not even the casual brushes that were usually unavoidable when people lived together. It had puzzled him at first, then annoyed him, then he had gotten used to it. Now he was annoyed again.

“Look, I don’t care what kind of stupid inferiority complex you have going on, there is no way I am staying with her. I can’t take care of her! I can’t keep her safe! I can’t even keep _myself_ safe!”

“Oh? And why is that, Remus? Care to tell me?”

Now, if ever, was the time for Remus’ last resort, but suddenly he wasn’t even listening anymore. He had just noticed that Dora’s ring was still glowing, but the blue line wasn’t pointing at Sirius. It was pointing off to his right, as if Sirius wasn’t standing in front of him at all.

What could that mean? Was it broken? But if so, why had it led him to the palace at all? Had the Regent done something to Sirius, so now the ring wouldn’t recognize him? What if it was a sign that Sirius had been compromised somehow? Maybe they were being watched. Sirius had said his mother was a master of illusion. She could make people see whatever she wanted them to see. She could create shades.

Maybe this wasn’t Sirius at all.

It was certainly a very knowledgeable shade, if it was one. Sirius must have given it a good deal of information, and he would not have done so willingly. If the ring was right, then Remus hadn’t found the real Sirius yet. He was being held captive somewhere and forced to reveal details about Dora’s whereabouts. Sirius had said the Regent would stop at nothing to permanently remove Dora from the situation, and Remus taking her away to some other part of the world would certainly accomplish that.

If this unpleasant theory wasn’t true, and Sirius was just being a self-centered teenager, then Remus could come back for him. But if it was true, if the Regent was listening…Remus had to give her what she wanted, and he had to be very convincing.

He cut off the rest of Sirius’ words with a sharp gesture, as if he had suddenly lost patience. “You know what, you’re right. You have done a terrible job, and nearly anyone could do better. That girl has been through so much, and now you want to leave her? Fine. Maybe you were family to her, but you aren’t any more. Any parent that would abandon their child doesn’t deserve to be a parent at all!”

Sirius—or his shade—stepped back in surprise at this abrupt reversal, and his eyes filled with very believable pain. Remus didn’t let that stop him. He let his chest swell with self-righteous anger that was not entirely feigned and stepped forward threateningly.

“I _will_ take her away with me. We’ll travel until we find places and people that actually care about us. She won’t be that hard to convince. I’ll just tell her the truth, which is that you are too self-centered and afraid to be there for anyone. If she won’t listen…I’ll make her forget.” He dropped his voice to a low hiss. “I’ll tell her to forget you, and she will. Neither of us will ever think of you again.”

Sirius’ mouth fell open in shock. It seemed like he might protest, but Remus couldn’t hold up a ruse like this much longer. He turned away, letting his cloak cover him once again. 

“Remus, I—wait!” Sirius called out from behind him. 

Remus started to run, turning corners at random and trusting his cloak to keep him safe, until he was sure he was well away. He stopped at last, panting and heartsick, to look at Dora’s ring. The glowing line from the ring was actually thicker and brighter than it had been before. Hopefully that had been the right decision.

He started to follow the line again, ducking out of the way whenever he heard people coming. He didn’t want to push his success with the concealment spell on the cloak too far. The thread of blue magic continued to grow stronger. Remus kept expecting it to lead him to a dungeon, or perhaps just a bedroom or a closet where Sirius was being held and abused, but that didn’t happen. Instead, after nearly an hour of wandering he found himself in a dark, apparently unused hallway, literally up against a wall. The ring was pointing directly into the wall in front of him, and no matter how many times he turned down side corridors to go around it, it always seemed to lead back to the same spot.

“A secret room then,” he murmured. He stepped close to the wall, looked conspiratorially from side to side, and whispered, “You’re not really a wall are you?”

The wall didn’t respond, it not being in the nature of walls to talk, but when he put his ear to it he could hear a faint swishing sound. If he concentrated, the sound got louder, until it seemed to roar. It wasn’t words like his own spells. It was more like the sound of the wind on a stormy day. It was the sound of someone else’s magic, perhaps an illusion cast by the Regent herself.

“Hmm. I think you’re a door. I don’t know what kind of spell you’re under exactly, but it doesn’t matter. No self-respecting door should hide their true nature. Go ahead then, show me what you really are.”

The wall seemed to grow foggy, and now when he squinted he could make out the shape of a plain gray door. He tried the handle, but it was locked. He leaned close and whispered, “Do what you were meant to do. Open. And don’t set off alarm bells or anything while you’re at it. Show me how sneaky you can be.”

The door swung open obediently without a sound of hinges. Remus swallowed and peered into the darkness beyond. It was quiet. This was an unusually dark hallway, and almost no light shone into the room. The ring’s glowing blue line pointed straight into inky blackness. 

“Sirius?” he whispered, almost fearing to hear an answer. His mind filled with horrific images of Sirius lying broken, wounded, bloody. Would the ring stop working if he was dead?

When there was no response, Remus sucked up his resolve, took his little lantern from his pack, and lit it. He couldn’t keep himself from cringing back from what he might see, but the room completely defied his expectations.

It was a relatively small room, hidden in a gap left by larger rooms around it. The whole thing was not much larger than the bathroom back at the castle. On either side and along the back, there were shelves running from the floor to the low ceiling which held evenly positioned jars of various sizes. It reminded him of nothing more than a pantry. He glanced down at his ring and his heart sank. The ring was pointing upward and to his left, through one of the jars on the top shelf of the room. He had gotten mixed up. Sirius was on the other side of the wall behind the jar, in a different room entirely. Remus sighed and raised his lantern for one last look, then gasped. The jars were labeled, and the one the ring was pointing to was clearly labeled _Sirius Black._

Remus’ heart was pounding so hard he could hear it echoing in the tiny room. He stepped closer, peered through the amber liquid in the jar, and stumbled backwards in horror. That pounding wasn’t the sound of his own heart at all.

It was the sound of the heart in the jar.

Remus retched into his hand and nearly backed out of the tiny room entirely. He looked wildly around him. All the jars were labeled with names. They were all filled with the same amber liquid and floating in each one was a reddish, squishy looking—

 _Lung, liver, part of an intestine._ The wolf in him recognized organs when it saw them. Remus himself had skinned and eaten enough wild game to understand that these organs had not come from animals. He was standing in a room full of body parts. Human body parts.

He had woken up after more than one full moon to find pieces of flesh, just like this, only not in organized jars, but scattered around the remains of people he knew. His body tried to revolt again as he remembered where the rest had gone, what the wolf had used him for while it had had control. He clamped his hand tightly over his mouth and collapsed down onto the floor, overcome by this visceral reminder of his own monstrosity. 

His breath came in fast, choking gusts into his cupped hands as he struggled against the unproductive urge to faint. He needed to think. A room full of organs in jars. And Sirius’ was a heart? Was it _his_ heart? Had he come too late, was Sirius dead already? But then why could he hear it beating?

He pressed his palms into his eyes and reminded himself that, however this room had come about, it had not been his doing. It had been some other kind of monster entirely. Maybe, unlike the wolf, it was one he could stop.

He took a deep breath and made himself stand up and walk closer to the jar with Sirius’ name on it. Sure enough, the heart inside was still beating. He could even see swirls of blood moving inside the open ends of the arteries, but the blood was not leaking into the amber liquid. It was going somewhere else, somewhere not here.

Forcing himself to continue taking deep breaths so he wouldn’t pass out, he slowly picked up the jar with shaking hands. Hesitantly, he pressed his ear against it. It was the same rushing magic as the spell on the door. Only the pattern of the gusting wind was slightly different. Different spell, same wizard. Or Sorceress.

The windy spell didn’t have words, but he instinctively knew what it did. If this was really Sirius’ heart, it had been spelled to keep working, to keep Sirius alive. There were other lines of magic extending outwards from the jar, blowing metaphorically past his ears. However this arrangement had come about, there were strings attached.

His chest clenched with horror and grief. This explained Sirius’ strange behavior far more precisely than any traditional blackmail. Had Sirius’ own mother truly done this? Butchered her son while he was still alive, just to gain a new way to control him? 

The heart seemed small. How young had Sirius been when it was removed? Its container was only a little bigger than a canning jar, and the heart floated inside with plenty of room to spare. Remus watched the heart beating in its prison, making the amber liquid shiver with each beat. The longer he stared at it, the less disgusted and the more devastated he felt.

Finally, he slid his pack off his shoulder and very carefully placed the jar inside it. He wasn’t sure what to do with it, but at least Sirius’ heart would not be in his mother’s keeping any longer.

He straightened and scanned the shelves to make sure there wasn’t anything else belonging to Sirius here. He didn’t find anything with Sirius’ name on it, but he did find a tiny vial filled with dark red liquid. He stared at the label for several seconds before he remembered why the name, the only one missing a surname, was familiar to him.

_Theodore_

Prince Theodore is what the posters had said. Dora.

He snatched that bottle up too and put it in his pack with the larger jar. The vial of blood didn’t have the same concentration of spells around it as Sirius’ heart, but it was probably what the Regent used to track Dora’s magical signature. She would have it no longer.

He looked despairingly at the other jars. The Regent had dozens of people under her control, but what could he do? He wasn’t about to break the jars and send these people to their deaths. He left them.

Now he had to find Sirius again. That hadn’t been a shade, after all, it had just not been _all_ of him. Remus shivered, thinking of the empty space that must be hiding inside Sirius’ chest. He would find Sirius, and they would figure out how to fix it. Soon, hopefully, or he would have to leave without knowing the situation resolved. The moon would leave him no choice.

Finding Sirius the second time, without the ring to guide him, was much more difficult. Remus tried to go back to where they had bumped into each other, but he had gotten too turned around. He wandered through the side corridors and multiple stories of the palace for so long he began to regret not bringing another meal before he finally he found Sirius in a large garden room in the east wing with a huge map table on the far side of it. Any doubt Remus might have felt that the person he had rebuked earlier was truly Sirius and not a shade was erased when he saw how he was sitting. He was slumped in one of the chairs, which he had pushed back from the edge of the map table, bowed forward with his head in his hands. He looked like a man who had lost all hope, which was exactly how Remus would have expected the real Sirius to feel after what he had said.

Unfortunately, he was not alone. There were nearly a dozen guards lining the walls of the room, and there was a sharp looking middle-aged woman standing on the other side of the map table. Her unusually pale skin, tiny facial features, and smooth black hair left Remus in no doubt about who this might be.

The Royal Sorceress wore a long dress that flowed from her shoulders and draped over her without entirely hiding her form. The fabric was gray and devoid of lace or other decorations in what Remus could only assume would be the next fashion trend. Although she wasn’t terribly tall, the lack of a waistline in the dress and her straight, loose hairstyle gave her the impression of a column of stone.

“Snap out of it,” she was saying. “I’m trying to talk to you!”

“Yes, mother.” Sirius sighed and shifted so he was slumped against the back of the chair instead of over his lap. His face was so closed and rigid that he might have been carved out of stone as well.

“We have more important things to do than indulge your lack of posture and propriety. This game is turning in our favor for this first time this season. Regulus’ troops have sent word of what my scrying staff have already seen. The Strangians have retreated past the Blue Meadows and into the foothills surrounding Blue Mountain.” She moved pieces around on the map table as she spoke. Sirius nodded, but his eyes didn’t follow the movement of her hands.

Remus edged into the large room from the far doorway. He doubted his disguise would hold up under the Regent’s direct scrutiny, but he wanted to keep an eye on Sirius until he could get him alone again. He was not about to let him disappear into the maze of this horrible building a second time.

The room was larger than two of Sirius’ own “castle” living rooms put together, and they were all the way at the other end. Traditional Ingarian architecture seemed to favor echoing, open spaces. The map table was positioned at the far end of the room, and there were numerous potted plants around the borders. The plants were thriving in the sunlight that poured through the glass greenhouse-style wall and roof that made up half the room.

Remus was trying to decide on an appropriate hiding place when the doors he had just slipped through opened next to him. A man in a slightly grander version of the uniform the other guards wore stepped in, followed by a dozen more liveried men.

“Changing of the guard,” he announced to the room. The Regent paid him no mind. She continued to discuss strategy and move the counters around the map while the guards that had been on duty filed out and were replaced by the new shift.

Remus was still watching the new guards, trying to make sure none of them had noticed him, when he saw a flash out of the corner of his eye. The light was coming from a ring on the Regent’s smallest finger, where an orange gem was now glowing. The Regent glanced at her ring with surprise, then up at the guards who had just entered, and her face broke into a broad smile.

“Ah…Sirius. Come here. I have news for you.”

That seemed to get Sirius’ attention but only barely. He stood up but didn’t move closer, keeping the table between them.

“What is it,” he asked. His voice was more dead and cold than Remus had ever heard it before.

“Do you know what this is?” Her voice was light with mock sweetness. She held up her hand with the ring on it. It bore some resemblance to the one Remus had stolen from Dora that morning.

Sirius didn’t answer or even shake his head. He just looked at the ring, at his mother, and waited.

“I have been waiting a long time for this, you know. How many times have I tugged on your leash, and how many times have you obediently come running?” She walked around the table to him and reached up to stroke his hair. “What a good dog you’ve been, all these years. But so stubborn! So unhelpful when you could have been truthful with your mother and avoided so much…unpleasantness.”

Sirius leaned away from her hand, and his upper lip curled with disgust. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Silly, silly Sirius! How many times did you tell me,” she waved her hands in dramatic imitation, “‘I have no idea where he is!’ or ‘Maybe we should search in Montellbino!’ or ‘It’s been so long, surely he’s dead!’ When all along…he was with _you._ ”

Sirius’ eyes widened and he stepped back from her. “That’s—that’s not true—”

“Oh yes, it is.” Her eyes narrowed and she followed him, step for step. ”And now, at last, after years of me tugging on your leash…the little pup has followed you home.”

Sirius whipped his head around wildly, looking around the room like he was searching for someone. He opened his mouth to protest her accusation, or perhaps to shout a warning, but his mother was too fast for him. She whirled around, looking at the guards posted evenly around the room.

“Guards!” she said. “Shut the doors! No one is to go in or out, including yourselves. Anyone that attempts to leave should be shot on sight!”

The guards jumped with surprise at being so suddenly addressed, but at least some of them rushed to obey. They ran in pairs to the three entrances to the room and shut the double doors, returning to attention in front of them.

Remus had to jump out of the way to keep the one nearest him from accidentally bumping into him, and he ducked behind a tall plant to avoid any further collisions. He had a very bad feeling about this. It sounded like the Regent was saying her ring had detected an intruder, which he definitely was, and the dog metaphor sent a bolt of fear down his spine. He pressed himself to the wall behind the plant, murmuring to his cloak quietly, trying to reinforce the concealment charms and make himself look like an inanimate part of the room.

The Regent was prowling around the room, looking at each guard and behind the plants with the teasing air of someone playing hide and seek.

“Oh, Teddy!” she sang out. “Little Teddy! Come out! This is no time for hiding. I’ve so looked forward to this…family reunion. Come out, or perhaps I will have to hurt Sirius here to motivate you!”

“Stop it!” Sirius shouted, tugging on her arm. “She’s not here!”

It was then that Remus finally understood that they weren’t talking about him at all, they were talking about _Dora._ The Regent’s ring must be a bit like the one he was wearing now. It had alerted her that Dora was in the room. She must have followed him. How had she gotten out of the castle? He had spelled her to stay, but perhaps he hadn’t been careful enough. Trust that girl to find a loophole. She had either disguised herself as one of the guards, or she had slunk in behind them without being noticed.

This realization made him gasp loudly before he could stop himself, and the guard on his right turned sharply towards him. Remus began to panic.

“Guards, freeze! Don’t move!” Remus projected his command loudly enough that all the guards in the room would hear it.

Sirius and the Regent turned towards him. Sirius made eye contact with him for a mere split second before something slammed into Remus’ throat, making him crash back into the wall. The guard next to him had not responded to the command like the others. Perhaps he was one of the minority of people soothsayers couldn’t influence, a bad listener, but there was no time to wonder about it. Remus felt cartilage crumple in his throat. That was bad enough, but to his horror the impact of his back against the wall made something in his pack go _crunch._

He was still watching Sirius, so he saw the instant reaction when the spelled jar holding the heart cracked open. Sirius doubled over as abruptly as if he had been stabbed, gasping in pain. He reached out for the arm of the chair next to him, missed, and crashed to the floor.

“Stop it! Leave him alone!” The shout came from one of the guards on the other side of the room. The guard had clearly only been pretending to be frozen in place and now rushed forward, shouting at the Regent. This distracted the guard wrestling Remus enough for Remus to elbow him in the face, wincing at the crunch of bones.

“Fucking sneaking wizard!” the guard burbled and punched Remus in the stomach, hard. The air went out of him and he doubled over with nausea. Through the haze he saw an opportunity, so he let himself tumble all the way to the ground, then when the guard lifted one foot to step on him or kick him, he lashed out with his leg and knocked the guard off his feet. The guard’s skull hit the ground with a crack loud enough to ensure unconsciousness. He reached for the guard’s gun, but the momentum of the fall sent it skidding across the room. He let it go and knocked himself in the ribs, trying to persuade his lungs to expand again.

The scuffle had thrown aside his cloak, leaving him exposed on the floor, but aside from the wide eyes of the unmoving guards, no one seemed to have noticed. The Regent was standing tall facing the guard that had moved out of place, who was really much too skinny to be a healthy human at the height she was imitating, let alone a palace guard. As Remus pounded his chest, the guard shifted back into Dora’s usual face and shape. Unlike the other guards, she did not have a gun. Instead, she was wielding a sword. She pointed the sword straight at the Regent’s chest with some semblance of proper posture, but any threat was ruined by her obvious shaking.

“Let him go!” Dora poked the sword forward, but the Regent did not flinch. On the contrary, she looked smugly satisfied. She spared a glance for Sirius, who was curled around himself on the floor, facing away. He was twitching and gasping—still alive, Remus registered with relief. That knowledge sent air flooding back into his own lungs in a sudden rush, and he managed to sweep the cloak back over himself. The Regent must have heard him command the guards, she must know he was in the room, but he wasn’t sure if she had actually seen him. She was focused on the girl in front of her.

“Freeze,” he said, but his spell had no effect, because he couldn’t even get the words out. The guard’s first blow had been even more effective than the second, and his throat was raw and functionless. Even with air in his lungs, he couldn’t speak. He began to move towards Sirius. He had to crawl in an awkward hunch, trying to keep the cloak covering him and wincing at every crunch of shattered glass in his pack. The Regent didn’t seem to be taking Dora too seriously, so hopefully that meant she was safe for the moment. As long as she didn’t do something stupid, which she probably would.

“I think I’ll leave Sirius the way he is. He’s being quite useful, and he gets so few opportunities.” Apparently oblivious to Remus’ movements, the Regent turned back to Dora, flipping her long black hair over her shoulder as she did so. “And look at you, Teddy! So many faces, but still the same weak, silly boy underneath. You don’t even know how to hold that thing!”

“I am _not_ a boy!” Dora fumed, also seemingly unaware as Remus inched closer. “I’ve always been a girl, you’re just too stupid to notice! And I will kill you, so let him go!”

“I’m not really interested in talking to your latest false face. Why don’t you drop the act, then maybe we can talk.”

“No! No one tells me how to look anymore except me. Sirius!” she called to him but there was no answer, although his head rolled on the floor a little. Dora’s eyes widened in fear, and she turned back to the Regent, desperation rising in her voice. “Stop it, you’re killing him! Please!”

The Regent simply shrugged, apparently not concerned with either the prospect of Sirius’ death or with the blade in front of her. Remus could feel the glass jar sloshing in his bag, and every time he moved he had visions of shards of glass piecing the delicate walls of Sirius’ heart. He was sure that this, and no direct action on the Regent’s part, was the cause of Sirius’ attack. It seemed unlikely that she would even know why he had collapsed, yet she didn’t appear to care at all.

“Begging while brandishing your sword at me is an interesting development,” the Regent observed. “But...hmmm, no I don’t think I can help you.” She turned her back to Dora in a clear show of disdain, meandering over to the map table and carefully righting all the little markers that had been knocked over when Sirius had fallen and nudged the table. “You’ve always been too focused on your delusions to be an effective pawn, and yet you have demonstrated a slipperiness I find quite...irritating.” She raised her head with sudden inspiration. “Oh, I know what you could do! Why don’t you kill yourself? I think that _might_ persuade me to let Sirius go. And look, you already have a weapon. Fall on your own sword, like a Japanese Samurai, and we have a deal.”

Remus had no idea what a Japanese Samurai was, but it seemed possible that Dora might actually do something that foolish, if she was pushed far enough.

“Well? What do you think?” The Regent put the last piece upright on the map with a flourish. She turned back to Dora, and she must not have liked what she saw. “No dice? All right then, I’ll just do it myself.”

As she uttered that last word, a rush of magic entered the room. It was the roaring bellow of a hurricane without wind, centered on Dora. The spell had no visible effect, but Dora reacted to it as strongly as if someone had pushed her off a cliff. She screamed with all her voice and thrashed out with her sword in a move that seemed to be a clumsy combination of a slash and one of the moves Remus had been trying to teach her with the staff. The blade swung wide, and then she lost grip of it entirely. It clattered to the marble at her feet.

Sirius was still writhing on the floor. Remus gave him one last desperate look and changed direction, heading away from him and towards Dora. He couldn’t even see what was hurting her. Illusions, he remembered. What kind of illusion? Could an illusion be strong enough to hurt, to kill?

“Dora, it’s not real!” he tried to call out, thinking he might be able to spell her to disbelieve the illusion, but his voice was just a hoarse croak that even he couldn’t hear over the roaring of the Regent’s spell.

Cursing inwardly, he gave up on stealth and stood, pulling a knife from his boot. It was the only weapon he had left, and not one he was particularly good with. He didn’t trust himself to throw it from this distance—he was much better at slashing in close quarters. Once he was upright, terrifying wetness seeped out of his pack and through his shirt as the spelled amber liquid began to drain out of the jar, but he forced himself to ignore it. He shuffled towards Dora as quickly as he could, trying to run without disturbing the contents of his pack too much.

Meanwhile, Sirius had hauled himself to his hands and knees. His face was gritted in pain, but he was trying to crawl forward towards the struggle. Remus spiked with hope for one moment, but Sirius went crashing down again, rolling to his back. His hands groped nervelessly at the floor around him, as if searching for something.

Suddenly the tone of Dora’s screams changed. She no longer sounded terrified or hurt. This was a sound Remus recognized, that he had first heard shortly after meeting her, when she had screamed with rage at the plate pit, and again as he had closed the door on her this morning. Only now she roared stronger and louder, louder even that the spell that still filled Remus’ ears, as if she had transformed her lungs and voice box to give herself more volume. She launched herself upright, and her arms shot across the several feet between her and the Regent, much farther than anyone else’s arms would have been able to reach. They sprang from her like thrown spears and wrapped around the Regent’s neck as if they were completely boneless, and then the rest of Dora’s body came snapping after her arms, and girl and woman went crashing to the floor.

The Regent jerked and pulled at Dora’s tentacle-like grip on her neck with no results, and the sound of the roaring spell faltered. Remus heard one strangled, choking gasp from the Regent and then out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Sirius had found what he had been looking for. It was the gun Remus had knocked out of the stubborn guard’s hand. Sirius didn’t even try to stand up to shoot, he just lay flat on the ground, swung his arm around in a wide circle—using the floor itself to help him aim—and fired.

The echoes of the gunshot had long finished bouncing off the walls by the time Remus understood what had happened. Dora was holding a headless body, and the contents of the Regent’s skull were splattered across several yards of now sticky marble floor around her.

Dora gaped, frozen with shock, and Remus realized he had stopped moving too. He rushed forward, finally crossing the stupidly long room, and pulled at her shoulders. Dora unwrapped her arms from the stump of the body’s neck and let them subside back into their regular shape. She spared barely a glance for Remus, possibly because he was still wearing his cloak, and rushed over to Sirius, who was lying still and quiet with his eyes closed. The gun had fallen from his fingers.

“Sirius, what’s wrong! She’s dead, you killed her, what did she do to you?” she babbled, gasping when she saw Sirius’ bloodless, unresponsive face.

Remus pushed his cloak off his head so she could see him properly. He rasped, cleared his throat again and finally managed a hoarse whisper. “It wasn’t her. It was this. I found where she had hidden it, but the jar broke…”

Carefully, he eased the pack off his shoulders and looked inside. The spelled amber liquid had now entirely leaked out of what remained of the jar. Sirius’ heart was lying amongst the broken shards in the base of the container, beating feebly.

“What is that? Help him, please!” Dora choked a sob and clutched Sirius’ hand tightly in both of hers.

Shaking, panicked, and only able to think that he should make sure no glass shards had pierced the heart, Remus reached in and picked it up. It was slippery and warm and very, very soft.

“Remus...” Sirius said. His eyes were half lidded and unfocused, but he did seem to be at least partly conscious. Strangely, he was smiling.

“Sirius!” Remus scrambled into Sirius’ field of view. “I—I have your heart, what do I do? What do I do with it?”

“You have to put it...” Sirius voice trailed off. Remus felt the heart stutter against his fingers.

“Put it where? The jar is broken, Sirius!”

“Put it...back,” Sirius whispered. His eyes fluttered shut again.

“What do you mean, put it back? Do you mean _inside_ you? How am I supposed to do that?” Sirius didn’t respond, not even when Dora shook him.

“I’m not a Healer!” Remus moaned. “I can’t fix this!”

“Try! Please try!” Dora said. Her cheeks were wet with tears. “Just tell it to go back in!”

“I can’t! I don’t know what to do!” The heart was so small he didn’t even really need both hands to hold it. It beat twice more while he watched, then he couldn’t feel it moving at all.

“No!” he cried out. “Don’t stop! Keep beating!”

To his relief, this seemed to have an effect. He felt the muscle contract in his hand a few times, but it appeared to be getting weaker by the second.

“You have to do _something_!” Dora shouted at him. “He can’t live like this!”

Remus nodded, blinking tears out of his own eyes, trying to calm down enough that he could think what to do, what he could say to keep Sirius alive.

“Heart,” he mumbled, “Sirius’ heart. Just—hang on…”

He shifted it so he was holding it in one hand and put his other hand on Sirius’ chest where he thought a heart should be. He couldn’t feel anything.

“Help me get his shirt open,” he told Dora. She pulled frantically at Sirius’ clothing until his chest was bare. Remus let his hand rest on Sirius’ skin.

“Listen, skin, muscles.” He paused, suddenly wishing he had not queasily skipped over Sirius’ books on anatomy. “Bones, and lungs, and whatever else. You are going to move aside and let this heart back in where it belongs, you hear? Blood, you stay inside as much as you can, right where you are useful. All of you—parts, you all have jobs to do, and you are going to keep doing them.”

As he spoke, his voice got steadier and more confident. He let the magic flow out, making his words heavy and solid. He could feel it leaving him, especially after all the other spells he had cast today. Something was happening. Something was working.

He rested the heart on Sirius’ chest, still cradling it in his hands. Sirius’ normally stony white skin was even paler than usual and his lips were tinged with blue. He didn’t seem to be breathing. Tonks watched, nails digging into the skin of Sirius’ shoulder.

“Heart—Sirius’ heart...you need to keep beating.” As Remus said it, he felt the heart beat a little more firmly a few times before stuttering again. “That’s it, keep on like that. You beat for us, nice and regular. For me and Dora both. Don’t stop.”

He cupped his hands over the top of the heart and pushed down ever so gently. “Now you need to go back in. Everything else, move aside. Just for a moment.”

To his amazement, the heart began to sink into Sirius’ chest, moving through the intervening tissues as if they weren’t there at all. Remus rested his hands above it until it disappeared and there was smooth skin beneath his fingers.

“That’s good, good.” He whispered. “Go right where you’re supposed to be, right where you used to be. You remember, don’t you? Stay steady and strong. Stay with us.”

Remus could feel the heart beating through Sirius’ skin now, steady and strong, just like he had asked, but Sirius was still pale. His skin was cold. It wasn’t working. What had he done wrong?

Dora was crouched so low over Sirius’ body that her sharp, panicky breaths stirred the hair around his temple. Remus suddenly realized what was missing. “Breathe! Sirius, you have to breathe too!”

Remus’ palms lifted as Sirius drew in air, and some color returned abruptly to his face.

“There you go, you’re all right. You’re going to be all right. We’re here, stay with us.”

Sirius breathed again, and again. Remus sighed in relief at the sight, but Sirius didn’t regain consciousness.

“Is he better?” Dora demanded, after watching for a few moments. “Did you fix it? Why isn’t he waking up?”

“I don’t know.” Remus said. He slowly drew back his hands. Sirius continued to breathe. The blue had faded from his lips and cheeks, and he had a new pink undertone to his skin that had never been there before. Surely that was a good sign. He put his ear to Sirius’ chest, listening to the sounds of life and the overlapping echoes of his spells.

_Strong and steady_

_Breathe_

_Stay with us_

He lifted his head and decided to cast one more spell, because he couldn’t let Sirius sleep, if that was what he was doing. He had to know if it had worked.

“Sirius, wake up.”

Sirius eyelids twitched and then opened. For a moment he stared blankly upward, and Remus feared his mind had not survived the few minutes he hadn’t been breathing. But then, suddenly, he moved. He sat up, folding his legs in front of himself and clutching his hands over his chest where Remus’ hands had been moments before.

“Oh gods,” he whispered. “You _did_ it, I can feel it, I can feel—I can feel _everything!_ ” He smiled wildly, with his eyes crinkled at the corners in a way Remus had never seen before, although by now he had seen Sirius smile many times for many reasons. In that moment he looked much younger, like the child he must once have been.

Dora sobbed in relief and threw herself onto him before Remus could stop her. He worried about the damage it might do, but Sirius didn’t seem to mind.

“ _Dora!_ ” Sirius wrapped his arms around her tightly. His hands gripped the loose fabric of the guard’s uniform she wore, which reminded Remus that they weren’t truly alone. He glanced around to make sure, but the guards were all still in their places, frozen by his spell and looking thoroughly shell-shocked by all that had just happened. They would need some talking to soon. The one he had knocked out still lay unmoving on the floor.

He turned back just as Sirius pushed Dora out of his arms enough to look her in the eye.

“Dora, Dora!” His voice seemed to ring with joy. “I’ll never leave you again!”

She laughed. “Promise!”

“I promise.” He curled her back in to his arms.

“I thought you were going to die!” she said. “I thought she was killing you!”

“I’m all right now, it’s all right,” he told her, smoothing his hands over her back. She shook with a few sobs of deep relief. Sirius looked at Remus over her shoulder. 

“I knew I could count on you to figure it out, you stubborn, nosy—” he broke off, laughing, and didn’t continue, but the warmth of gratitude emanated from his whole body in a nearly palpable wave. For the first time that Remus had seen, there were tears in his eyes and running freely down his cheeks. There was a new expressiveness there making it very hard to look away.

“Let’s go.” Sirius stood swiftly, as if he hadn’t been nearly dead moments before. He pulled Dora to her feet and Remus scrambled up as well. “We have to get out of here before she sends another one.”

“Maybe you better take it easy.” Remus said. “Another what? She’s dead— _really_ dead.”

Sirius glanced at the mostly headless body a few yards away. “That wasn’t her, not really. She Projects herself. That was just some poor fool who let her take their body.”

“Who was it?” Dora gasped.

“It doesn’t matter.” Sirius sighed. “Whoever it was, they were dead on the inside the moment she took them over. I haven’t seen her in her real body in years. It might take her a while to get another one...but it might not. And she can send plenty of people to hassle us in the meantime. We should go. Can you spell those guards not to talk about this?”

“I will, but still, let’s not do anything too crazy,” Remus insisted. He just couldn’t believe Sirius was really as well as he seemed. “Let me know if you feel dizzy or something, all right?”

“Whatever you say, soothsayer!” Sirius said agreeably. He strode confidently towards the door, not even bothering to walk slowly.

“Should we really just go?” Remus looked around, letting his eyes skip over the mess in the middle of the floor. “Isn’t Dora the rightful heir? We could take back the kingdom. We could stop the war!”

Sirius whirled around, still moving too fast for Remus’ comfort. He looked at Dora. “Do you want to?”

She had just been bending down to pick up her sword. The hilt shone brightly against the backdrop of gore, a twining pattern of gold and silver that Remus thought looked oddly familiar, as if he had seen it in a dream. She glanced behind them at the body. Her hand closed around the hilt of the sword, but her olive brown skin was ashy pale and her lip trembled. She stepped tentatively over to Sirius and rested her head against his side in the manner of a much younger child seeking protection from strangers. Her free hand clutched at the hem of his coat. He put his arm around her and looked down at where her pink head was buried in his still-unbuttoned shirt, waiting.

Finally she mumbled something so quiet that if Remus’ ears hadn’t been as sharp as they were, he wouldn’t have heard it at all.

“I just want to go home.”

“We’re going home.” Sirius relayed this to Remus immediately, with no judgement for her decision. Remus sighed, disapproving but too tired to argue, and called the guards over to stand in one spot so he wouldn’t have to shout to spell them into secrecy. The one he had fought with was still unconscious, but his soothsaying magic wouldn’t work on that one anyways. Perhaps he could tell the others to keep him quiet, one way or another.

“Wait,” Sirius said. He looked the guards over speculatively, his eyes lingering on a few faces. Remus wondered if he recognized some of them. “Tell them to stay quiet for a few days so we have a chance to get away, but after that…” he turned to address the guards directly. “Tell whoever you want. People should know. Your Prince Theodore—” He paused when Dora’s hand twitched and dragged her sword on the marble floor with an audible scraping sound. He laid his hand gently on the side of her face and waited until she finally looked up and saw his warm smile. “ _Dora_ , as you should know her, is alive and safe.” He looked back up at the guards. “She isn’t with the Strangians, and she never was. She ran to preserve her life. Now that the Regent knows,” he nodded towards the body on the floor, “everyone else might as well know too. I think this country could do with a few less secrets.” 

Dora’s eyes closed in relief, and she leaned her head on Sirius’ side again. Remus saw her shoulders descend as she relaxed, and he understood. Sirius was letting her off the hook. If the country continued to wage war even without the driving force of her kidnapping, it would not be her fault. Perhaps this would be enough to weaken the Regent’s control, if not her determination. Watching the way the ten guards looked at Dora, who wore their own uniform hanging loosely from her shoulders, Remus could believe it was possible.

So Remus spelled the guards to keep their secret only for a few days. When it was done, Sirius took the sword in one hand and Dora’s hand in the other, and led them swiftly towards the far door. They were nearly there when one of the guards called out after them, voice thick with emotion, “Long live Princess Dora!” 

Dora kept walking and clutched Sirius’ hand tighter than ever, but as they passed through the doorway, Remus saw her look over her shoulder with wide, surprised eyes that stayed fixed on the guard who had spoken until they passed out of sight.

+++

“You stole an airship?” Sirius repeated, with an admiring tone that Remus didn’t think was at all appropriate. Sirius was leading them through the maze of the palace up towards the roof. “I can’t believe you got the pilot to agree to fly!”

She looked sheepish at that. “It was Randolph. I might have promised him a date. I looked like you,” she added when she saw Sirius’ horrified look. “So I guess _you_ promised him a date.”

Sirius laughed. “Randolph never did know when to give up. Too bad I have no intention of following through.” He clapped her on the shoulder. “Good show, though. Very resourceful of you to take advantage of my sordid reputation.”

“I _told_ her to stay home,” Remus muttered disapprovingly.

“No, you told me not to go through the _Kingsbury_ window, and you locked the door,” Dora corrected. “You didn’t say anything about the Porthaven window. And I’m still mad at you!” She turned to Sirius for sympathy. “He tried to lock me up, and he took my ring! With magic!”

“I see,” Sirius said, with the delicate air of someone who had no intention of getting in the middle of something. “Well, no need to fly all the way back to Porthaven or climb through windows now. Remus will unlock the door, won’t you, Remus?”

Remus nodded reluctantly. He had to get away, and soon. It was already dusk, and he only had twenty-four hours to get away from other people before the transformation. He wanted to leave now, but he was in the middle of a huge city. There was no way he could guarantee enough distance if he walked out the Kingsbury roads, or even if he stole a horse and rode out. The countryside was just too civilized. The fastest way out of the city—the only way, at this point—was through the enchanted castle door. Once they got back, he could turn the knob and be in the Waste, in the middle of nowhere, in just a moment. If he told the castle to walk in the opposite direction, that would be even better.

It was by far the most logical option, but he was illogically reluctant to do it. It seemed far more dangerous to stay with them, because he could already tell he wouldn’t want to leave. They had both assumed he would be coming back with them, even though he had told them he was leaving, and he was apparently still in Dora’s doghouse. Sirius was high on life, nearly sparkling with joy, and Remus felt as drawn to him as to water after a month in the desert. This whole time he had thought they had been getting to know each other, but Sirius had been divided. He had been a prisoner held behind unseen bars. Now he was free and whole and full of warmth. He even smelled different, although Remus couldn’t put his finger on how without stepping closer to take it in, and he wouldn’t let himself do that. Sirius had been nearly irresistible before, but now... It didn’t help that the wolf was already prowling around the corners of his mind, urging him on, wearing down his self control.

Dora was not much easier to be around. Sirius, with his longer legs and unnatural energy, kept pulling ahead down the long palace corridors, while Remus’ hesitation made him lag behind, and Dora bounded joyfully back and forth between them like a sheepdog. She let her hair take on an even more vivid shade of pink and occasionally intertwined it with gold. Remus wanted to ask her a million questions about how she had gotten all the way to Kingsbury and through the castle undetected, how she had gotten a guard’s uniform...he wanted to take her out to the meadows around Star Lake and show her the proper way to hold a staff again, or—better yet—help her practice fighting using her metamorphmagus abilities to her advantage, as she had done instinctively against the Regent. But he wouldn’t be able to do any of those things, and the pain of it bit at him more with each step.

Sirius led them to a flight platform on top of one of the newer parts of the palace, where several pod-sized airships were waiting. At Sirius’ urging, Remus convinced the attendants on deck to wander off and not notice as Sirius commandeered one of them. Remus winced at the growing bite of burnout as he pulled on his magic for the dozenth time that day.

Sirius started up the ship with easy confidence and gestured to them. He pulled Dora up and then extended the same hand to Remus. Remus stared at it. Sirius had never offered to touch him before, not once in nearly four weeks of living together.

“No more secrets,” Sirius said, seeing his surprise, and suddenly Remus understood. Secrecy had been part of the spell Sirius had been under. He hadn’t been able to let Remus get close before, because he couldn’t let Remus hear the spell. There was something else different too. For some reason, Sirius was not hesitant to touch him for Dora’s sake either, not anymore.

Hesitantly, he put his hand in Sirius’ and let himself be pulled up. For a moment they stood close together on the narrow deck of the little airship. Sirius’ cheeks flushed pink, a shaky smile pulled on one side of his mouth, and his eyes glowed with unfiltered adoration. It was nothing like the coy, confident flirting Remus had seen him deploy like a weapon countless times by now. Sirius was as shy, as authentic, and as utterly transparent as a teenager in love. If it had been any other day of the month, and if Dora had not been there, Remus would have kissed him right then. Instead he dropped Sirius’ hand and went to the third and last seat on the airship, the one farthest away from the pilot’s place. He dropped his head into his hands and listened with half his attention as the other two chattered away up front.

The ride back to the castle only took about an hour, much faster than it had been to walk. True darkness arrived at about the same time as they did, and a few stars—not many because of the city lights—came out. Sirius and Dora waited expectantly while Remus leaned his forehead on the door and spoke soothingly to it. At first it seemed determined to stay locked, and it took him some moments to convince it otherwise around the burning pain behind his eyes.

Suddenly, the dark wood of the door was gone, and he saw only the dim blackness of the sky and the looming shapes of the buildings. He was lying down, but he didn’t remember getting there.

“Ooof!” Dora said from somewhere outside his field of vision. “You’re heavy!”

There was something warm around his wrist. Sirius tutted, and it was only as he let go that Remus realized that the something had been Sirius’ fingers. “You’re as burnt out as four-day candle. Let’s get you inside.”

Sirius made to pick him up, but Remus waved him off, embarrassed. He shook the bleariness from his head and stood up, leaning against the door frame. “I’m fine. Just got dizzy.” He rubbed his hand over his eyes and stumbled inside. “I guess I did a lot today.”

“I’ll say,” Sirius said. “Go sit down. I’ll make you a restorative.”

The castle living room was cold and damp, thanks to the window Dora had broken. Sirius just shrugged at the damage and directed her to go sweep up the glass from the Porthaven street while he lit a fire and bustled about in the brewing area. Remus collapsed in his wingback chair, letting his head hang between his knees. He had to get a grip. He had to get out of here.

“Here you go!” Sirius’ voice next to his ear was too bright and too loud. “Drink up. Your magic won’t come back for a day or two. Nothing to be done about that, you’re tapped out. But this will make you feel less awful after an hour or so.” He leaned in closer, lowering his voice when he saw Remus wincing. “And then I want to talk to you about something. After Dora goes to sleep.”

Remus nodded, although he really only had attention for the cup of red liquid in Sirius’ hands. The potion was bitter and, unlike everything else Sirius brewed, not immediately effective.

“You should take that.” Remus gestured weakly to the Healing potion on the top shelf, which had only one dose left. “In case those spells weren’t enough.”

Sirius laughed. “All right, but I doubt I need it. I haven’t felt this healthy in twelve years. This is good stuff.” He tapped his chest, indicating Remus’ spells, and his voice became light and dreamy. “Everything will be different now. You’ll see.”

Remus was too tired to respond, but he did watch to make sure Sirius took the Healing potion. He wasn’t sure what would happen to all the spells he had cast once he transformed. Perhaps they would disappear or fade, like they did when a soothsayer died. It certainly felt like he was dying when the wolf took over, so that would make sense.

Remus sighed and slouched against the wing of the chair for what seemed like hours while his head continued to threaten to break open with pain and the world periodically spun around him. Meanwhile, Sirius entertained Dora by balling up the shards of glass in his hands and blowing bubble-like orbs out through his rounded fingers. He made her two tiny glass spheres to use as earrings and then flattened the rest into four panes to replace the ones that were broken. He squinted at the result, apparently unsatisfied, and spent a long time carefully smoothing out air bubbles.

Despite Remus’ best efforts, he fell asleep to the sound of their excited talking. It was quiet when he woke several hours later, and he could feel moonlight boring through the walls of the castle. He sat up with alarm when he saw Sirius unmoving and limp on the couch. Sirius never slept, only Padfoot. Remus rushed over and put his hand on Sirius’ chest, waiting until he was sure that the small movements from both heart and lungs were present and steady. He sighed in relief. Sirius really was just asleep. The day must have caught up with him before he had a chance to go to bed. Or perhaps he had been waiting for Remus to wake up so they could talk about...what? It didn’t matter now.

He had never seen Sirius sleep before. Now here he was, peaceful and perfect in the firelight, and completely unaware Remus was watching him. He slept with his legs curled up and his arm under his head, like a child who hadn’t yet begun to use a pillow. His clothing was rumpled, and the buttons on his shirt were coming loose from where Dora had frantically pulled them open. Remus could fix that easily, if he just had a little more time. 

There was a lot more that he wanted to do here. He wanted to get to know this new Sirius, that smiled shyly at him and thrummed with life. He wanted to stay with Dora and watch her grow strong enough for the throne that was surely still her destiny.

He could leave and come back, but they were too clever. He might get away with it this time, but they would notice if he left every full moon. He couldn’t stay unless he told them what he was. That was a risk he couldn’t even begin to justify. It was exactly because he had begun to care for them both so much that he had to leave. Outside, in the cold dampness of the Waste, the moon was already high above him. Tomorrow night it would be full. He was out of time. Unless...

He looked at the last of the unread books, still piled beside his chair where he had left them. It wouldn’t take long to look through what remained, just a couple hours. Surely he could spare that much time, if he could make the castle walk away from him once he left. It would be hard for the wolf to follow that scent trail.

He sat on the floor, not trusting himself to stay awake if he returned to the chair. He flipped through the books as fast as he dared. It didn’t take very long, in the end. There was nothing of use in any of them.

He shoved them away in frustration and stood up, scanning the room. The bookshelves were tidy except for the empty places where the volumes he had just scattered around the floor should go. He had now read, or at least checked, every book in Sirius’ obscenely large library. All except one.

It was totally unreasonable to expect anything, but still, as Remus climbed the stairs to the bathroom, he couldn’t stop himself from hoping. The clouds of the Waste blocked most of the moonlight, but he could still feel it sneaking in through the small bathroom window. It crawled across his skin, seeping into his bones as he shoved at the bathtub with his shoulder. It was solid porcelain and very difficult to move. He crushed a few of his fingers when it slipped from his grasp too soon, but that was a small sacrifice. He would be breaking them all tomorrow night anyways.

With his uninjured hand he pulled out the book that had been used as a replacement for the broken claw foot. Part of the cover had disintegrated where it had adhered to the broken foot of the tub over time and moisture had caused mold to grow along the edges of the pages. He swiveled around on the tile floor to put the title into the light, heart pounding and hopes completely out of control.

_100 Cheap Cleaning Potions for the Tidy Witch_

Remus choked back an angry sob, seething with the unfairness of it all. He hurled the book across the bathroom. Something shattered, but he didn’t care. He bent over his legs, trying to keep moisture from leaking from his eyes.

It had been a waste, all of it. A month’s work, a lifetime’s work, and he hadn’t learned anything to cure himself. Hundreds of books and none of them could help him. Nothing could help him.

It was time to leave.


	9. In Which Remus Runs

**Day Twenty-Eight**

 

_It’s time for me to move on. Keep the castle heading west. Stay inside._

_Remus_

 

He spent the rest of the night and most of the next day on the move, headed east out of habit in the absence of a plan. He wasn’t sure which part of the Waste he was in, how far it was to the ocean, or what he would do when he reached it, but those were questions for another day. For now, all he had to do was keep moving.

He used the small amount of magic he had regained so far to heal his crushed fingers. He also tried to make his scent hard to track, so the wolf would have no reason to head back towards the castle. He ran most of the time. He hadn’t done any running in more than a month, but it didn’t seem to matter. His body remembered the steady lope that had served him well so many times over the years. Any rustiness he might have picked up from staying in one place for too long was more than made up for by the new limberness the Healing potion had given him.

He had taken the entire bag of athelas and left all the money he had left in exchange. It wasn’t enough, but it was the best he could do. His need was simply too great to leave it behind. With luck, he would be able to find the other ingredients he needed in the next week. He would brew the potion. He would still break every month, but he wouldn’t have to stay broken anymore. That was more than he had ever known was possible before a month ago. It should have felt more satisfying than it was.

The Waste was not helping. Remus had never noticed it before, but there was something wrong with the magic here. Now that his own magic was depleted, he could feel the empty place where it had been refilling with the ambient magic. The magic in him before had always sounded to him like the lapping of tiny, quiet waves, like those the wind created in the still waters of the mountain lake outside Dora’s window. He had become used to the sound of his magic without even realizing it, long before he had been able to use it, in the way he was used to the sound of his own heart beating. In comparison, the Waste’s magic squelched discordantly, like boots in rotting mud. After a day of exposure, he felt like he had been swimming in filth. His skin seemed to crawl with imaginary creatures, and he found himself constantly looking over his shoulder for some unknown, sneaking presence.

Part of that was because of the approaching transformation, of course. His joints ached, his head was fuzzy, and he felt the constant, jittery terror of being stalked. The wolf was gaining on him, not from behind, but from inside. It was already afternoon. It would catch him soon.

Something else caught him first. Remus saw it when paranoia demanded he check the landscape behind him yet again. There was a dark shape skimming across the sky towards him, something too large to be a bird. He squinted at it in confusion. The only flying creature larger than a bird he knew of was a dragon, but surely there were no dragons in the Waste? Within a few moments, it came close enough that he no longer had any doubt about what it was, or rather _who_.

Remus growled in frustration and rubbed his hands over his face, trying to compose himself before Sirius got close enough to land. How had he managed to follow him? Perhaps heading east had been a little too predictable. He would have to find the right thing to say to get him to leave quickly or risk exposing him to the wolf. Hopefully he could convince Sirius to leave him alone, but if not, he wasn’t afraid to use his magic instead. Assuming he could gather enough of it to do any good.

“I told you not to transform,” he said sharply, as soon as Sirius landed. The spells he had cast on Sirius’ heart might still be aiding in the healing process, and transforming would make them disappear.

“I was careful,” Sirius said. Indeed, aside from the wings and a few stray feathers blending into his black hair, he looked human.

“What do you want?” Remus bit out. There was no reason to sound friendly anymore.

Sirius frowned at his nasty tone but didn’t imitate it. “To ask why you’re leaving. You didn’t even say goodbye. I told you I wanted to talk to you.”

“I left a note.”

“It was two sentences! You don’t have to leave, you know. You can stay as long as you want. Especially now—”

Remus let the wolf’s impatience rule him and cut him off. “Yes, fine, as long as I want. Well, I don’t want to stay any longer. You should go back now. Goodbye.” Trying to make his point, he turned and started to walk away.

“I know the real reason you’re leaving,” Sirius called after him.

“No, you don’t. I mean—I told you why.” Remus was having trouble making his pretense convincing. He kept walking. His body would have to send the message his brain could not verbalize properly.

“It’s because tonight’s the full moon. You’re going to transform.”

Remus froze in place, and his insides froze with him. His mouth opened, but his chilled throat could not form words. He could hear Sirius approaching him slowly from behind. The sound of each footstep sent a crackle through him, racing his heart further into terrified overdrive.

Sirius was right behind him. “Remus...it’s all right. I knew since you came.”

Remus whirled around, stepping backwards instinctively when confronted with Sirius’ bulk. Sirius, who couldn’t stand without looming. Sirius, who couldn’t exist without looking beautiful, smelling beautiful. Remus shook his head, trying to banish the moon-addled yearnings. Maybe his grasp of the language was slipping too, because he couldn’t believe the words he thought he had just heard. It was impossible that Sirius should know. Nothing in the last month would have happened if he had known! 

“I went to the inn in Marsh Folding while you were sleeping on the first day.” Sirius said gently. “I asked why they had chased you.”

“No, you never said!” Remus gasped.

“I tried to get you to tell me yourself about a dozen times, but you didn’t. It was obviously supposed to be a secret. I try not to ferret out other people’s secrets.” He smiled. “Unlike you. Thank the gods for your meddling.”

Remus hardened himself against the effects of Sirius’ new warmth, avoiding his gaze. This didn’t make any sense. Maybe the wolf was already fouling up the workings of his mind, making him hallucinate, although that had never happened before. “You let me stay!”

Sirius shrugged. “You weren’t exactly dangerous.”

“I’m plenty dangerous now!”

“I know.” Sirius’ eyes passed over his shaking shoulders and clenched hands. Remus could feel that gaze like a touch, and he shivered from an unpleasant mixture of shame, fear, and longing. “But you don’t need to leave. I want you to stay. So does Dora.”

“ _Dora_ knows?” His heart thudded in his chest. That was even more difficult to believe. She had always acted so normal around him, so trusting.

“I told her his morning. Neither of us cares. We want you to stay.” His voice was calm and steady, everything that Remus wasn’t.

“No. I have to leave.” Remus shuddered, stepping backwards again. Sirius matched his step, and the distance between them didn’t change. Remus ran away with his eyes instead, trying to look anywhere but at Sirius’ face, at the expression he couldn’t even begin to understand.

“Why?” Sirius asked. “Why do you have to leave?”

“I have to. There’s n-no reason to stay.” He was losing the fight for coherence. He had never had an opportunity to experience this before, but apparently he was not very good at talking when the change was this close. All his energy was going towards fighting with his body. His feet itched to run, but the rest of him burned to rush forward at Sirius. He closed his eyes, struggling to stay frozen between those two unacceptable alternatives until Sirius gave up on talking and left.

“Remus.” Sirius was whispering now. Remus could hear every particle of air passing through his vocal cords. “There are lots of reasons.”

Sirius stepped closer. Too close. Remus couldn’t see him, but he could hear the creak of his steps in the heather. He could feel the heat of him, mere inches away. Sirius’ scent spun painfully in front of his closed eyelids like a holiday pinwheel. He really did smell different after what had happened yesterday. The blood pumping through him was fresher and somehow more real than it had been. Remus wanted to push his face against Sirius’ chest and breathe it in. He wanted to press his teeth into his neck and taste it.

“It’s...not safe,” he rasped. His throat ached.

“You can change at Star Lake. There’s nothing around there for hundreds of miles. It will be fine.”

Remus forced his eyes open, trying desperately to understand. Star Lake? The lake behind the blue dot? His lungs shook with the effort of holding still. It was costing him everything he had. The patterns on Sirius’ wind-rumpled jacket were blurred. He couldn’t focus his eyes.

“Not safe,” he repeated.

“All Dora and I have to do is turn the door, and you’ll be as alone as you could be. You think this is safer?” Sirius gestured broadly at the hills of the Waste, keeping his movements purposely slow, as if it was clear how easily Remus could spook. “Running on to places you’ve never been, with no idea how close the next farmhouse might be? And never mind what you’re leaving behind! Doesn’t matter, as long as you keep moving, is that right?”

Remus sucked his breath in, trying to shove it down into his legs to keep himself from bolting. He did want to run. He wanted to run forever. Sirius’ words only made the blood whirling through his limbs swirl faster, for all that Remus was trying to make sense of this and actually _listen._

“I have a theory,” Sirius continued. “I don’t think you do this keep other people safe. Maybe you tell yourself that, I don’t know. But if that was why, you would find some cave in the wilderness and stay there. But instead you keep moving. I think you’re trying to keep _yourself_ safe, from other people.”

Remus’ eyes widened. He couldn’t even tell right now if that was true or not. He could hardly think at all, but then Sirius’ wings crept forward around him into a half circle, partially shielding them both from the misty dampness. He wasn’t trapped—the emptiness of the Waste was still behind him—but he could feel the gentle pressure of this open embrace without touch as clearly as if the black feathers were brushing his skin.

Perhaps it was his imagination, but the loose shield of Sirius’ dark wings seemed to keep the wild, unpleasant magic of the Waste at bay. Only a handful of air separated them now. He could feel Sirius’ breath blooming over his forehead in soothing, enticing cycles. Remus took a deep breath himself, convincing his lungs to expand more than they wanted to. He smelled feathers. It didn’t smell human. That smell cleared his head, steadied him, and gave him the strength to look up at Sirius’ face. Sirius brightened at the visual contact. He leaned down and pulled his wings even closer, still without touching. 

“If you want to leave, go. But you don’t have to run any more. Remus, you are _safe_ with us.” 

There were a dozen urges competing inside Remus now. One was to stay just like this, trying to memorize the details he hadn’t been able to see from far away, like the shape of Sirius’ eyelashes and the honest yearning in his eyes. He also still felt the pull to rip Sirius open, to feel that luscious blood bursting over his face, although the compulsion was more distant than it had been a few moments ago. He wanted to run away, he wanted to pull Sirius down into his arms, he wanted to curl up under a bush and hide until the change came. But under it all was a tiny but persistent voice, the one he had forced himself to ignore all month. It seemed to point towards Sirius with a narrow, hopeful thread of light, like the blue line of Dora’s ring, beckoning him to follow, whispering, _There’s something here._

It was, without a doubt, the smallest and stupidest voice—it would probably get him killed—but Remus knew, in this moment of clarity amidst the chaos of the Waste, that it was the only one he wanted to listen to any more.

“I won’t—” Remus stopped and had to clear his throat because his words had come out inaudible. “I won’t make it in time.”

Sirius’ eyes widened, and he pulled back his wings abruptly, whirling around. Remus jumped. He had to lock his knees to keep himself from attacking on the spot. Sirius looked back at him over his shoulder as he knelt on the ground. “It’s not far like this. I’ll carry you.”

Step by step, Remus crept closer. He was afraid of what would happen if he climbed onto Sirius’ back. He found himself staring at the small triangle of Sirius’ neck that was exposed by his parted hair. He could smell that skin already. He could nearly taste it. He backed away, frightened. “It—it’s too close.”

Sirius looked at him speculatively from over his shoulder. His eyes grew distant for a moment and more feathers sprouted from the back of his neck. His hair clumped together into long, curving feathers that lay smoothly along the top of his skull. His coat changed too, darkening as if from spreading ink. The fabric separated into more feathers which also seemed to sprout directly from his body.

“Better?” Sirius asked.

His scent was more masked now, replaced by the dry, dusty smell of a bird. Remus hesitantly placed his hand on the silky feathers in the center of Sirius’ back. When the surge of violent desire didn’t return, he nodded.

“Promise,” he mumbled and then forced his voice louder, “if I change...drop me.”

Sirius laughed, a sudden, loud sound that made Remus jump. When Sirius looked over his shoulder again, his smile was wide, and the corners of his eyes shone with tears. “I promise, no matter what happens, I will _never_ drop you.”

Remus bristled. The wolf was no laughing matter. He opened his mouth to argue, but before he could think of what to say, Sirius continued, more somberly, but still glowing with kindness, “And I promise I’ll make sure you don’t hurt anyone, including me.”

Remus clenched his hand in the feathers and closed his eyes in a mismatched combination of fear and relief. He took one last moment to steel himself and then climbed onto Sirius’ back. Sirius didn’t waste any time and took off immediately with a great, lurching leap.

Remus should have enjoyed such an unusual experience of flying, but he didn’t. He clung to Sirius’ broad shoulders and held himself tightly against Sirius’ hips with his knees, but it was hard to feel secure, even after he cast a spell to make sure he wouldn’t fall off.

“I told you, I’m not going to drop you,” Sirius chided gently over the sound of the wind. “I’ve done this before.”

Another time, Remus might have wanted to know more about that, but he was too far gone now to be curious, even if he had been on the ground. As it was, his eyes streamed from the wind, and before long his arms and hands were numb with cold. Sirius was not flying particularly high, but the Waste, it seemed, was never warm, never dry. Remus buried face in the warm feathers and tried not to look at the horizon too often, not that he could even see the sun through these clouds.

“It doesn’t matter,” he told himself desperately, “I’m not going to change. Not this time. I will stay human, I will!”

He pushed as much magic into his voice as possible, but even with the moon hours away, he could tell it was useless. The words slipped off him as if carried away by the wind. His magic was meaningless in the face of what was coming. Compared to the wolf, he was powerless. He coughed a sob into Sirius’ shoulder blades and tried again and again, but the spells just fizzled out.

“Stop it,” Sirius said finally, not unkindly. “You’ll just burn out again.”

Remus had been speaking in his native tongue, but apparently Sirius had been able to feel the meaning of the spells, and their lack of effect, even though he couldn’t understand the words.

“Fly faster then,” he pleaded, and Sirius did.

The light was starting to fade when the castle finally came into view. It was marching forward to meet them with Dora at the wheel. She waved, and Sirius swooped down onto the balcony, landing upright with surprising elegance that was instantly spoiled by Remus falling off his back and scrambling away. He let his pack slide to the floor and pressed himself into the corner by the chimney, dizzy and confused. He was too close to them. He had to get away. The wolf was coming. Its teeth were closing around his throat. He would never get away from it, no matter how far he ran. His eyes darted to the door to the inside of the castle, but Dora was in the way.

“Are you all ri—” She started to move forward with her hand outstretched as if to catch his elbow, and he panicked.

“No!” he shrieked. “D-don’t touch me!”

She backed away, eyes wide. Sirius put his arm in front of her and pushed her back against the balcony railing. “It’s all right, Remus,” he said, in the same soft, reassuring tone he had used out on the moor. “We won’t touch you. Go on.”

He nodded towards the door. Remus darted through it and stumbled down the stairs. He couldn’t see clearly, but he knew the castle well enough by now. He was hindered, instead, by the way his muscles spasmed and his bones clacked together. He was out of time. He wasn't going to make it.

He never remembered, after, running through the living room, or turning the knob to the blue dot for Star Lake, although he must have done it. But he did remember the rough wood of the door against his face after he had shut it, as he leaned against it and told it not to open until morning, repeating the spell over and over until he collapsed down into a pile of screaming flesh and knew no more.

+++

If Sirius had only thought of it, he could have run downstairs on Remus’ heels and turned the knob before the moon rose, but by the time he had sent Dora inside and transfigured himself back to normal, it was too late. Remus’ screams echoed through the castle as his own transformation consumed him. The sound traveled easily even through the sturdy wood planks of the door and made Sirius reel with dismay. He dashed down the stairs and into the living room, straightening his coat and schooling his face to calm.

Dora was pressed against the far wall, staring wide-eyed at the front door. Sirius cursed himself under his breath and strode across the room, trying to project confidence he could not truly feel when Remus’ screams, which were no longer recognizable as human, were pounding on his ears.

He had just reached the bottom of the entry stairs when the sound stopped. Sirius froze in the sudden, eerie silence with one hand on the door and the other hovering over the translocation knob. He could feel the fierce, protective spells Remus had cast zipping through the wood. Nothing would be getting through this door tonight. Sirius closed his eyes and let his breath out in a relieved sigh. Of course Remus would have thought of that.

Suddenly the door thundered under his fingertips as something very large crashed into it from the other side. Sirius jumped backwards a full three feet and tripped on the lowest stair. He caught himself with his hands and scrambled back upright as Remus in wolf form charged the door again. He was snarling in a way that made Sirius want to tuck his tail and cower like Padfoot. Instead he lunged forward and spun the knob.

The sound cut off mid-growl, replaced by the faint evening bustle of the Kingsbury street that was now outside. Sirius panted, no longer able to pretend calm even for Dora’s sake. He pressed the heel of his hand into his chest, trying to soothe the pounding of his heart. That was something he had not felt in a long, long time.

He reached out blindly for the banister and lowered himself to the stairs. Blood hammered through his every limb. He could even feel his pulse in his toes, and his heart thrummed against the wall of his lungs like the wings of a panicked bird. It was not a pleasant sensation, but he couldn’t stop the wild, relieved grin that took over his face. He had nearly forgotten what it was like to feel something with his whole body, instead of just his mind. Who knew what a difference a heart would make?

He felt Dora’s hand on his shoulder, and he turned and pulled her abruptly into his lap, tucking her head under his chin and cherishing even the nauseating terror that came with worrying about her safety. She was old enough now that she didn’t usually tolerate this kind of cuddling, but she didn’t protest. She must have been even more frightened than him. He had a hunch, from observing Remus’ reactions to his bird-like form, that the werewolf would tolerate Padfoot well, but Dora had no such safeguard.

“It’s all right,” he told her. The steadiness in his voice served to calm himself too. “He charmed the door. Nothing can get through until morning.”

“I know. I heard him casting the spells.” She sounded much more composed than he was. He had underestimated her again. It was surprisingly easy to do. She pressed her ear more closely against his chest. “I can hear your heartbeat now. I never could before, but I didn’t think about it.”

“It’s not your fault.” He didn’t like the guilty tone in her voice. “It’s over now anyways.”

“Remus fixed it,” she whispered. “I’ve never seen anything like it. He made the magic so thick, it was like you were glowing. Oh!” She jerked out of his arms, elbowing his ribs, and scurried across the room to the stairs. “My window!”

It took Sirius a moment to understand what she was talking about, but then he was on his feet and following her. “Don’t open it!”

She threw him a scornful look over her shoulder as they entered her bedroom. “I’m not _stupid._ I just want to see.”

Sirius put his hand on the window frame, feeling for the charms Remus had cast after the Searchers had come. They were as strong as ever. Remus had cast them to protect against anything that might be dangerous, which surely included himself tonight. Satisfied, Sirius allowed himself to look out the window. The moon had not yet risen over the peak of the surrounding mountains, but the meadow was still visible in the sun’s dusk ambient light. At first they didn’t see anything but the grass waving gently in the wind. This window was not on the same side of the house as the front door, so if Remus was still there, he would be out of their line of sight.

“Look!” Dora, who had fearlessly pressed her face against the glass, saw him first. The wolf trotted around the corner of the house, apparently having given up on battering the front door, although his disgruntled growl was audible even from this second story.

Sirius released his breath in a wistful sigh. Remus was just as beautiful in wolf form as he was as a human. He was a bit larger than an ordinary wolf, which was to be expected given the necessity of preserving mass, but he looked like a regular wolf in all other respects. His fur was brown, shading from the dark black-brown of his human hair to the warm sepia of his human skin. It lacked the tight, springy corkscrew curls that Remus’ human hair had, but the wolf was still very recognizable as him. Sirius couldn’t tell at this distance, but he thought it likely that Remus’ wolf eyes would be the same deep, dark brown as his human ones. Even the grumpy way he turned away from the house, muttering to himself in indecipherable wolf sounds, was reminiscent of Remus bustling around quietly lecturing anyone who would listen, including nearby objects. He sat down on his haunches with a huff and rubbed his muzzle against his front paws as if trying to wipe something off. Splinters, maybe, from the door.

“He needs a good brush,” Dora said, clicking her tongue. Indeed, there were loose tufts of underfur sticking out in random places where the winter layer had begun to shed.

“You’re not wrong, but he’ll have to work it out for himself,” Sirius said. Padfoot enjoyed being brushed, but a werewolf certainly wouldn’t.

Remus gave up on whatever he had been trying to do with his nose and scratched his ruff vigorously with his hind leg, dislodging a tawny cloud of fur. Dora giggled.

“He’s not so scary,” she said.

Sirius mirrored her smile, although privately he was uneasy with the idea of her finding the werewolf adorable. Some things were worthy of fear, and the huge, snarling thing that had tried to break their door down was one of them. “That’s only because he can’t smell us now. You heard what he was like before.”

Remus finished his scratch and loped off into the meadow. They watched him hunt in the tall grass, for field mice Sirius guessed, although they couldn’t tell at this distance. Sirius couldn’t help but admire the easy grace in his movements. He put Padfoot to shame, that was for sure.

“Is he going to stay with us a long time now?” Dora asked, when the wolf had disappeared into the trees.

“I don’t know, actually. I hope so. He didn’t say much. I think he was a bit muddled. Scared, definitely.”

Dora nodded. “I didn’t realize how much transforming hurts him. I would be scared too.”

Sirius shook his head. “I think he was more scared of hurting us. Or of what we might do to him if we found out. It will have to be a secret, little lemon. You saw what the innkeeper and her patrons tried to do.”

“I hate secrets.” Dora sighed.

“I know. But some secrets are too important not to keep. You understand that, don’t you?” He brushed his fingers over her hair. “He will need us to protect him, just like I protected you.”

She jerked her head away. “I don’t need protecting! I got all the way to Kingsbury by myself, and I would have rescued you even if Remus hadn’t come!”

“That’s true, of course,” Sirius said hastily. He had been talking about when she was younger, but it was no use trying to explain that now. “And I’m very grateful.”

“I would have killed her too!” Her fists clenched in a disturbing surge of bloodlust. “I didn’t need you to shoot her at all!”

“I know,” Sirius said quietly. “That’s why I did it. I don’t want you to kill anyone, not even a shade. Not ever.” He suppressed a shudder. “I _am_ proud of you. You saw through her illusion, and that’s no easy thing.”

Even Sirius couldn’t do that. He had hoped, a long time ago, that learning to change himself into Padfoot would help, but it didn’t. Being Padfoot helped indirectly, as there was nothing more soothing than spending a lazy afternoon as a dog, but even that transfiguration was not enough to shake off his mother’s illusions. Animagus magic was different—older, perhaps—than most transfiguration, and the relationships between it and other types of magic was more complicated than he had counted on. On the bright side, that meant he could probably be Padfoot without dislodging Remus’ soothsayer spells. He pressed his fingers to his chest again. He could feel those spells even now, washing over his heart like warm water that glowed in the sunlight.

“I didn’t see through it, not really.” Dora’s whisper drew him back out of himself. She leaned against his side, just a bit, and he immediately put an arm around her. “I just got so angry that I didn’t care.”

She had spent the majority of the trip home bragging about her accomplishments, but she hadn’t told him what illusion the Regent had cast. Sirius didn’t know what she had seen. He thought about asking, but he held his tongue. It would be cruel to make her relive it. Or perhaps he just didn’t want to know.

“That’s why we couldn’t leave, isn’t it?” she asked. “Because she had your heart?”

“Yes. I couldn’t go too far, and I couldn’t stay away when she wanted me to come. I wanted to tell you—”

“But that was part of the spell, I know. Can we go now, though?”

“Wherever you want. And we should, soon. Now that she knows how thoroughly I’ve betrayed her, the Waste won’t be safe for us any more. I have an idea about that, actually. Will you tell me what you think?”

He told her his new plan, which had only just begun to form on the flight across the Waste with Remus on his back. To his relief, Dora was thrilled and might have gone up to the balcony to set their course at once if she hadn’t been drooping with exhaustion. She hadn’t gotten a full sleep last night, and it was already past her usual bedtime.

“Can Padfoot stay with me?” she asked.

“I want to get some drawings made up. But I can do it up here if you like.”

Dora nodded. She didn’t give any outward sign, but Sirius suspected she was more scared of the wolf prowling outside than she liked to let on. He hoped he had done the right thing by bringing Remus back. Remus was right. Dora had been through too much already. She didn’t need the added burden of a werewolf in the house, but already Sirius couldn’t imagine being without either of them. He had spent most of the day before yesterday thinking he had lost them both for good. It had felt like his very soul had been ripped away, even worse than what his mother had done. Just thinking about it now made him sick with distress.

He went downstairs to get the castle blueprints and his other drafting supplies. By the time he got back Dora was asleep. He moved her desk under the window in hopes of spotting Remus again, but the wick in the lamp burned down nearly a full inch before the wolf reappeared.

Sirius frowned, leaning over the desk to see better. Remus’ easy, graceful stride was gone. His speed was not much diminished, but he held his front paw up close to his body. The night was only about a quarter through and he had already injured himself. Sirius shoved out of his seat and hurried downstairs. He was being stupid, sitting here drafting additions for the castle when Remus was getting hurt and there was no Healing potion brewed. Sirius had taken the last dose himself last night, and it hadn’t even occurred to him to make more right away.

He felt doubly ashamed when he opened the drawer that should have contained the dried athelas and found Remus’ coins instead. Remus had insisted that Sirius take the last of the potion, even though he knew he would need it himself. He had been planning to make do with just taking the supplies to brew later. The selflessness of it created a twisting sensation in Sirius’ chest. He retrieved Remus’ pack and the athelas from the balcony, threw the potion together as quickly as he dared, and began stirring: four times clockwise, four times counterclockwise, over and over, as the full moon crept slowly upward, over the castle, and down towards the western horizon.


	10. In Which a Journey Begins

**Day One**

 

When Remus returned to the world, he was lying on his back. The morning sun was already burning away the mountain mist, but it didn’t touch the fog in his mind. He felt hazy and distant from everything around him, including his own body. He groaned, more from frustration than from pain, which his clouded mind prevented him from feeling. He was all too familiar with this floating sensation, especially in combination with the smell of his own blood. He was bleeding. Badly.

He tested his limbs one by one. Once he confirmed they were all at least present, he managed to pull himself up to a half sitting position. It took him a minute of confused staring around to understand the significance of the high dirt walls and the sparkling white dunes that made up the floor of this strange room. He was in the plate pit, along with several tons of shattered dishes.

The place was rather worse for wear. The walls were covered in long claw gouges and the sharp dunes were liberally sprinkled with blood. The wolf must have been drawn in by the smell of food and old human and become trapped.

That explained the snowflake-sized fragments of porcelain that seemed to be lodged in every inch of his skin. Unfortunately not all the shards were that small, and there was one particularly large one in the side of his leg, right above his knee. This was the source of most of the blood loss. It had already partly come out, and in his dizziness he made the mistake of pulling it out all the way. More blood fountained from the spot. He cursed and pressed his hand against the wound.

He was naked, of course. He couldn’t remember if he had had the presence of mind to undress before the transformation came. His clothes were certainly gone now, and he had nothing to bandage himself with. He nearly flopped back down and gave up, but then he spotted something odd sticking out of the pile of porcelain next to where his head had been. Unlike the shining white dishes, it was the dusty matte of old linen.

It _was_ linen, he realized once he had it in hand. It was a shirt. It looked like it had been made for someone even smaller than Dora, or perhaps it had been hers long ago.

There was more clothing underneath it, something royal blue with glinting braid, but Remus paid it no mind. The shirt shredded into strips easily even though his grip was already weak from blood loss and he appeared to have sprained his wrist. He wrapped the wound as tightly as he could with one hand. The effort used up the last of his strength, and he collapsed onto his side. He concentrated, trying to summon the words to cast a spell to help keep himself from bleeding to death, but he had nothing. He was more empty of magic than he had ever yet been. He was so low, he couldn’t even feel it refilling. The wolf had used it all.

“Greedy bastard,” he mumbled, and the world faded back into white mist.

+++

Someone was shouting and shaking him. He grumbled and tried to push them away, then registered his post-moon state and exploded into defensive panic. He scrambled away several feet on the force of adrenaline alone before he managed to open his eyes enough to recognize Sirius.

“Oh, thank the gods,” Sirius gasped. “I thought you were dead. Here, let me help...” He reached for Remus’ leg.

“Not quite,” Remus said, or perhaps he just thought it. The haziness was already coming back. He let himself sag against the crumbling dirt wall of the pit. If Sirius wanted to hurt him, he could hardly do anything about it now.

“Do me a favor and don’t pass out,” Sirius said tersely. He put Remus’ hand on the wound, which was apparently still bleeding profusely despite Remus’ attempt to bandage it. The porcelain shards where he had been lying were now thoroughly saturated with blood. 

“Put pressure on it,” Sirius said. Remus complied, albeit weakly, and Sirius removed his coat and tossed it over Remus’ bare torso, although he seemed motivated more by convenience than a desire to preserve modesty. He removed one sleeve with a pinch of his fingers and swiftly transfigured the fabric into additional bandages. Remus clamped down on another wave of dizziness as Sirius wrapped the fresh bandage around the first clumsy attempt.

“I’m sorry it took so long. I didn’t even think about this place! The potion’s brewing, but it’ll be a few hours yet, so if you could just—stop bleeding!” Sirius cinched the bandage tight. “Right. Good enough. Let’s get you out of here.”

He was holding a rope, one end of which was tied to something out of sight at the top of the pit. Remus groaned. “I’ll stay.”

“No, you’re cut up enough as it is.” Sirius helped him into the coat and tied the rope around his chest. Remus grumbled, but he couldn’t muster the strength to push him off. Sirius climbed up the rope with irritating ease and then hauled him up. Remus used his less-injured arm and leg to climb a little and fend off the walls as he rose. It wasn’t much, but at least he could tell himself he wasn’t completely helpless. He rebelled again, though, when he got to the top and Sirius made to pick him up.

“I can walk,” Remus snapped, levering himself carefully into a standing position.

Sirius raised his eyebrows skeptically. He stepped back just long enough for Remus to take a few prideful steps, then caught him as he fell. Remus found himself scooped up without further consultation, and they set off towards the stone cottage where the castle door was. Remus grumbled some more, but secretly he was grateful. He was hard-pressed to stay conscious even being carried.

Dora gasped when they came inside. “What—”

“Keep stirring!” Sirius interrupted her.

She jumped and hastily continued stirring the cauldron. Remus inhaled deeply, savoring the encouraging smell of the Healing potion permeating the room.

“I’m alright,” he mumbled, trying to reassure her.

“He is,” Sirius agreed, although the tension in his arms betrayed him. “But he’s going to need that potion, so please be careful.”

Dora nodded and kept stirring, counting aloud to help herself keep track. Sirius nudged aside the curtain on the bunk under the stairs and laid Remus down with his leg elevated, taking a merciful moment to drape a blanket over him.

Remus sighed with relief. After hours lying in the plate pit, even the thin bunk mattress felt divine. He only had a moment to enjoy it, though, because now Sirius had taken it upon himself to pull out one of the porcelain shards in his arm. Remus hissed. Apparently his body had decided he would live, because he was starting to feel pain again.

“Let me do that,” he said, reaching for the tweezers.

“I really think you should just lie there and try to make more blood,” Sirius said doubtfully. Remus left his hand out, demanding, until Sirius sighed and transfigured another pair of tweezers from one of the buttons on his coat.

Unfortunately, his sprained wrist made him very clumsy, so he gave up after a few minutes and focused on the pieces big enough to remove with his fingers. The wolf had spent hours trying to leap out of the pit, landing with no regard for how inconvenient it would be to remove pieces of porcelain from certain parts of Remus’ body, but Sirius’ attitude was so clinical that it was hard to be embarrassed. Remus was too tired to care anyways. Slowly, the jar Sirius had brought over for the purpose filled with pieces of white glass in various sizes.

Remus groaned when he put his hand to his head and realized it was even in his _hair_. Bits were embedded in his scalp, and there was at least three dishes’ worth suspended in his curls. He dragged his head to the edge of the bunk, dangled upside down, and shook his hair vigorously. He listened to the tinkle of dish shards falling to the ground below with only minimal satisfaction. He would be shedding glass for a week. He stayed the way he was, with his head hanging off the edge of the bunk, not convinced it was worth the effort to move, while Sirius continued to fuss over him.

“I wouldn’t have come back if I had known I would end up in a perfectly designed wolf trap,” he muttered, only to instantly regret his words when he saw Sirius looking like a kicked puppy. He sighed and covered his face with his hands, because that was easier than apologizing.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius said in a voice thick with shame. “I didn’t even think about it. I’ll make a cover for it before the next time.”

Remus’ eyes widened behind his hands as it sunk in that there would be a next time. Sirius was not going to make him leave. He was going to stay here. He was going to _live_ here.

He spread his fingers enough to see Dora, who was upside-down from this perspective. She was watching him as she stirred the potion. He gave her a weary half smile, the most he could muster at the moment. She grinned, eager to be reassured. Then she glanced guiltily at Sirius’ back and returned her attention to her task, counting softly.

Being upside down was starting to be uncomfortable, but his head was so heavy. He licked his lips and tasted blood, mostly not his own. The wolf had hunted last night. From the scent, he guessed it had been mice, and perhaps a rabbit. It was probably all over his face. He must look awful.

Gentle fingers slid into his hair and cradled the back of his head, lifting him carefully back onto the bunk. “I think I got most of it,” Sirius said quietly. “The potion is almost done. I’m going to go stir. Rest. Oh, and by the way,” he added, “I put the athelas back in your pack, and I corrected your recipe. I can get more for the shop. I don’t want that to be the reason you stay.”

He walked away before Remus could even open his mouth to protest. Remus stared after him in disbelief as he took the spoon from Dora. She made a beeline for the kitchen and started eating whatever was in reach without even sitting down. She obviously hadn’t had breakfast. Sirius must have pressed her into stirring service the moment she had woken up, so he could go look for Remus. 

Unable to fathom such dedication from either of them, he just lay looking up at the now-familiar stair rafters. The sight made him realize he hadn’t laid down and slept properly for more than two days. No sooner had he thought this than his body staged a dismayed revolt, and it became very difficult to stay awake, even though he was now throughly experiencing the pain of the the deep gash above his knee. He let himself close his eyes, just for a moment, and when he opened them, Sirius was there with a teacup of golden liquid. Dora hovered nearby with a hunk of cheese in one hand and a slice of bread in the other. That, apparently, was for herself, but the potion-laced tea was for him.

Remus didn’t need their urging. He drank it in one go and sagged in place as a thousand cuts, large and small, began to knit themselves back together. That many injuries healing simultaneously created an an odd sensation, like having dry sand poured over his body. He closed his eyes and carefully rotated his wrist, which moved with only a little stiffness. The throbbing pain above his knee faded to a dull ache, and a dozen other sores and bruises that he had been forcing himself to ignore disappeared within the space of a few staggering breaths.

“What’s wrong?” Dora asked with a measure of panic in her tone. “Does it still hurt?”

“No, nothing hurts.” Remus wiped away the tears that had so alarmed her. Like the last time he had taken this potion, the absence of pain was strangely more unsettling than its presence. Sirius was watching too, his gray eyes warm with worry. “I’m just not used to it.”

They didn’t seem to understand, but he didn’t want to explain. He felt too exposed and vulnerable already, more so than he had ever been. The last thing he wanted to do was let on how pathetically grateful he was. He hid his discomfort by leaning forward to cautiously prod his knee. It ached, but nothing like before. He unwrapped it and examined the new skin beneath, which was only a little mottled with dark blue bruises.

“Looks pretty good.” Sirius said. “By the time you wake up it should be back to normal.”

“Right, well, thank you,” Remus said gruffly. He wrapped the blanket around himself and made to stand up. “Excuse me.”

“Where are you going?” Sirius put a hand on his shoulder, trying to press him back down into the bunk. “The sedative will kick in any minute.”

“Sedative? What sedative?” Remus asked suspiciously. He hadn’t noticed any sedating effect last month.

“The one I added so you wouldn’t keep doing reckless things like, you know, _sitting up,_ ” Sirius said. “You’re still going to have to replace all that blood on your own, so you need to stay flat and drink water.”

“Fine,” Remus snapped. He did not appreciated being medicated without his consent. “But first, I’m going to take a shower—or a bath, if you insist!—whether you like it or not.” He threw Sirius’ hand off his shoulder and elbowed him out of the way. Fortunately, he was able to stand on his own now. Sort of.

“Oh, come on, I’m covered in blood!” he protested when Sirius made to block the stairs. “I can’t sleep like this!”

“With what I gave you, you’ll sleep even if you’re hanging upside down like a bat.” Sirius folded his arms stubbornly, but Remus was stubborner. He glared, unrelenting, trying to hide how much he wanted to lean on the wall for support. Finally Sirius sighed and scrunched his hands into his hair in defeat. “All right, all right. But don’t take too long. The sedative will start working in about ten minutes.”

Remus restrained himself from making a smug comment about this victory. Sirius looked truly harried. He was still in the same clothes he had worn since being at the palace, and the powders around his eyes were smeared. He must have been up all night for the potion to have been completed by now.

Remus grabbed his spare clothes from his pack, which one of them had thoughtfully put next to his bunk, and pulled himself up the stairs to the bathroom. He winced when he saw himself in the mirror and filled the tub without further ado. He tried to scrub off all the blood, mud, tree sap, and other debris as quickly as possible, but not so quickly as to make him pass out from the effort. His hair would take a lot longer than ten minutes to sort out, so he settled for rinsing it and tying it up with a clean handkerchief. What it really needed was a good talking to, but his magic reserves were still too empty for that.

He woke up some minutes later when Padfoot nudged him. Remus was curled in a ball, leaning against the side of the tub, and the water had grown rather cold. Remus rested his cheek on the lukewarm porcelain and glared at Padfoot wearily. “You’re not supposed to change.”

Padfoot just wuffed cheerfully and minced his feet in place. He picked Remus’ hand up in his mouth and tugged, urging him to get out of the tub. Remus groaned but did his best to comply. His head was as heavy as a stone, and he felt himself drifting back off to sleep every few seconds, even when sitting on the cold tile of the bathroom floor. He managed to shrug into his clothes, but then he gave up and simply lay his head down on his arms. This was as good a place to sleep as any.

“Come on.” Sirius was looming over him, leaning down to pick him up.

“Leame ’lone,” Remus mumbled. “Sleeping.”

“You can’t sleep here. Other people need to use the bathroom too, you know.”

“You drugged me!” Remus slurred. He flapped his hand against Sirius’ chest accusingly.

“The Healing potion is a stimulant. Adding a sedative is standard practice for severe injuries or blood loss.” Sirius carried him out into the hall, but then he hesitated, looking down the narrow stairs. “Hmm.”

Remus giggled. “You’re scared. Dog.”

“I’m scared I’ll knock your already addled head on the wall,” Sirius said. “But actually, it’s fine. You can sleep up here.”

“Yeah, ’s nice here,” Remus agreed with a contented sigh. He rubbed his cheek against the warm shoulder of Sirius’ shirt. This was much better than the bathroom floor.

Sirius laughed, which made his chest vibrate against Remus’ side. His neck flushed pink.

“You didn’t useta do that,” Remus said. “Never pink. I fixed it.”

“Yes. You fixed a lot of things,” Sirius said quietly as he opened the door to his bedroom.

Remus lolled his head back in confusion, staring at the sudden cacophony of sparkling metal and gems above them. The ceiling was covered in strangely shaped gold devices and strands of crystal. There seemed to be thousands hanging down around them. Remus couldn’t even see the shape of the ceiling beyond. Each one was unique, but they all emitted a low thrumming of magic, like the sound of a harp.

“’m dreaming,” Remus said wonderingly. “Dragon cave.”

“Oh. No, it’s real.” Sirius winced. “Although I think it was in your dream. They’re misdirection devices. They were supposed to help us stay hidden. Never did much good though.”

“Loud,” Remus observed.

“Are they? I’ll take them down. We don’t need them now.”

Whether he took them down or not, Remus didn’t know, because at that moment he felt the soft embrace of a mattress—a _real_ mattress—underneath him, and he was instantly asleep.

+++

Nothing on the Waste grew very tall, but even the smallest shrub had height when you were lying on the ground next to it. This one had tiny blue flowers, each no larger than Remus’ smallest fingernail. It had dew on it too, although he didn’t think it was morning. The perpetual fog of the Waste was just always condensing on something.

He was lying out on the ground out in the Waste. His nose told him he was alone. Sirius must have changed his mind. 

Remus sighed, but he was still too heavy with fatigue to care very much. He watched a droplet of water grow on the tip of the of the shrub and slide down the knobbly branch. He slid down with it, dropping back into sleep.

When he woke again, he was still in the Waste, but he was clearheaded enough to understand the significance of the bunk mattress underneath him and the blankets tucked snugly around him. If he had been abandoned, it had been done with unusual care.

Sure enough, when he sat up the castle was there in front of him, not a hundred yards away. It was lowered to the ground in rest, and Sirius and Dora were climbing around high up on the side of it. Dora was drawing lines and symbols on the mixed wood and stone with chalk, consulting a large paper drawing for reference. Meanwhile, Sirius ran his hands over the marked areas, pulling and pushing them into new shapes. They must be making adjustments or repairs.

Remus stretched, enjoying the smooth pull of muscles that didn’t remember the discomfort of the transformation. Even the flesh above his knee felt fresh and new. The motion seemed to attract Sirius’ attention. He said something to Dora and she scrambled down the side of the castle and went inside. When she emerged, she was carrying a tray with cheese, fruit, and a pitcher of water.

“Hi!” she called cheerfully as she came nearer. “You slept a long time. Sirius says you should drink water and eat and that he’s almost done.”

She made herself comfortable sitting next to him on the bunk pallet and helped herself to some of the strawberries.

“Thanks.” Remus claimed a portion of the food for himself before it all disappeared and drank deeply from the water. It was late enough in the day that the wolf’s meals had digested and he was hungry again. He squinted up at the cloudy sky. Actually, it might be morning again. Had he slept so long? “What are you two doing to the castle?”

Dora shook her head, grinning mischievously. “It’s a surprise. Are you all better?”

“I think so.”

“We saw you, you know, though my window. You’ve got fluffy brown fur, but not as much as Padfoot. I saw you catching mice, like this!” She tilted her head and pounced on the ground, demonstrating.

Remus frowned uneasily. “That wasn’t me. I don’t control the wolf or remember it. It’s not me.”

Dora’s face fell. “Oh. All right.”

Remus hunched his shoulders. He wasn’t used to talking about the wolf. No one had ever known before. He busied himself with his hair, which had dried sadly flat under the kerchief, using words and his fingers to return it to its usual fluffy, pencil-thin curls. His magic seemed to have refilled somewhat since while he slept, which made sense. According to the _Balancing Energies_ book, physical healing always took precedent over magical healing. He had just gotten himself looking presentable, at the expense of most of the magic he had regained, when Sirius finished whatever it was he was doing and walked over to them.

“Good morning. You look better,” Sirius observed. Sirius looked better himself. He had obviously slept, and he had returned himself to his usual polished glory, although it was softened somewhat by the boyish excitement shining in his eyes. “We can go back inside now. Come up to the control deck.”

Remus felt only a small wave of dizziness as he stood, but he was still grateful for the warm chimney against his back once they had made their way upstairs. Sirius brought the pallet and blankets along, so it was actually quite comfortable, despite the crisp morning wind. Dora settled herself in her own favorite place, dangling over the edge of the balcony with her arms wrapped around the railing. Sirius set the castle into motion, now having to choose between several levers, as some had been added since the last time Remus had been here. The castle picked up speed and the wind changed. He smelled the musty salt of the sea.

“So...” Sirius said, with the air of someone preforming a drumroll. Dora kicked her legs in the air in excitement, which made her skirt—the one she and Remus had made together—flutter in the wind. “Dora and I have been talking. We’re going to take a page out of your book, and run away properly. I already disabled the Kingsbury door. I left the Porthaven one up since we might need supplies...or an escape route.” Remus raised his eyebrows at that, but made no comment as Sirius continued. “The government doesn’t have nearly as much presence there anyways. Even James doesn’t know about Jenkins.”

“No more mail!” Dora cackled gleefully.

“Exactly,” Sirius agreed. “Although it wouldn’t matter now, even if she did send another summons. I wouldn’t go. Anyways, Remus, since you’re always wanting to go east, I figured we would too, at least to start.”

“We’re going to go around the world, just like you!” Dora burst out, unable to let Sirius have all the glory. “We’re going to go _everywhere_.”

“That sounds wonderful.” Remus smiled at her passion. The castle climbed the last rise and strode down towards the shore until its feet began to sink into the dry beach sand. He was beginning to understand why they would have been making modifications to the castle. He was impressed that even Sirius could make something as heavy and unwieldy as the castle float. An escape route was a wise precaution.

“Ready?” Sirius asked, grinning wide. His hand was on one of the new levers he had added to the balcony.

“Yes, yes!” Dora cried, gripping the balcony railing tightly in delight.

As usual, her assent was all Sirius seemed to need. He thrust the lever forward with a flourish. They both turned to look back at the castle, and Remus stood up so he could follow their gaze. He was expecting sails or outriggers, but it was nothing like that at all. Two long, horizontal channels along the sides of the castle opened up and, with an elegant swoop, expanded into gigantic, fifty-yard long wings _._

Remus found himself hanging over the railing next to Dora without even realizing he had moved. The wings were batlike, with thick canvas over a steel support structure. There was a huge propeller at the back of the castle that was already beginning to turn. It was reminiscent of the airpod they had borrowed to flee the palace, only that had been about a thousand times smaller and more streamlined than the asymmetrical hulk of the castle. Even the warships he had seen were not so large.

“It won’t work, surely!” he called back to Sirius, who was watching the wings unfold with a gaze that was both manic and professional.

“Of course it will work!” Sirius beamed, radiantly confident. “Don’t worry, I do this all the time.”

“Let’s go!” Dora shouted. “Fly!”

Sirius had already turned back to the levers. The wings started to beat in a slow, stately fashion, and to Remus’ disbelief the castle began to rise ponderously into the air. Dora whooped in exhilaration, spreading her arms in imitation.

The castle rose still further and then suddenly swooped down over the water. The dangling legs kicked up spray before they tucked themselves in close like the bird feet they resembled. Sirius laughed, watching Dora’s ecstatic face with satisfaction. He brought them up to a more comfortable altitude and let them level off.

“It’s not perfect yet,” he told Remus, who had sat back down out of self-defense. “I need you for that, whenever you’re feeling up to it. We can probably get it to fly on its own, then we’ll make better time.”

“Sure,” Remus breathed, watching the waves pass by beneath them at the pace of a galloping horse. He was feeling a bit blown away, not just by the physical reality of flight, which he hadn’t been in any condition to appreciate either on the airpod or on Sirius’ back, but also by the realization that they had done this for _him._

He had expected them to run away. That was the natural consequence of Sirius’ new freedom, unless he were to help Dora reclaim her throne. She didn’t seem ready for that, so they were leaving. But they could have gone anywhere. No matter how confident Sirius seemed, crossing the ocean was the riskiest of all the paths they could have taken, and the only reason to do it was because that was where Remus wanted to go.

He curled up in his seat near the chimney with his legs against his chest, trying to digest this idea. Meanwhile, Dora returned to her dangling perch and heaved a huge sigh, as if she were breathing out properly for the first time in years.

“She won’t be able to get us now, will she?” she asked, almost dreamily.

“No, assuming that vial Remus found was all the blood she had. I always thought she must not have much, or she would have sent the Searchers more often. We destroyed it, of course,” he said aside to Remus. “But even if she has more, the Searchers have a limited range.”

Dora shuddered. “I can’t believe she took my blood while I was _sleeping._ That is so creepy. Is that how she got your heart?”

Sirius’ hands seemed to tighten on wheel. “No,” he whispered, so quietly that Remus might have been the only one that heard it. Then he continued more audibly, “No, she needed permission to take something so important.”

“Why would you give her permission to do _that_?” Dora asked, horrified and oblivious to his discomfort.

“I was young, about your age,” Sirius said, with obvious reluctance. “I was...well, I fell in love and it didn’t work out. She said she would keep my heart safe, so it wouldn’t happen again. She made it sound like she was being so helpful.” He sighed and pushed his blowing hair away from his face. “I didn’t understand then, what she was like. Not really. I regretted it right away, but she only needed my permission to take my heart, not to keep it. Later on I figured out she had set up the whole situation just to manipulate me into agreeing.”

“That’s awful,” Dora whispered. “She’s so awful...”

Sirius nodded. Remus couldn’t see his face from this angle, but misery and regret were obvious in the slumped line of his shoulders. “It didn’t even work like she said it would. It just kept me from realizing I was in love. That’s what she does. She twists reality around until the concept is meaningless...” He trailed off with a shiver.

Dora frowned suspiciously. “You mean you fell in love anyways? With who? It’s not _James_ is it?” She said this as if it was the most unpleasant outcome she could think of.

Sirius gave a short, self conscious laugh. His ears were bright red. “No, not James.” She opened her mouth to guess again, but he cut her off. “No, I won’t say any more, so don’t ask. You’ll figure it out if it becomes important.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Sure it is,” he said cheerfully.

“No, it’s not,” she grumbled. She squashed her face against her hand and watched the waves pass beneath them. Their color gradually brightened as they left the perpetual mist of the Waste behind and emerged into clear, warm sunlight.

Remus, meanwhile, did not have to guess. He wasn’t even surprised, after the way Sirius had been acting, but hearing him say it aloud still felt like a revelation. Dora was turned away, so Remus didn’t bother to try to hide the wide, telling smile that spread across his face.

The moment Dora’s attention was elsewhere, Sirius looked back over his shoulder, just out of the corner of his eye. When he saw the look on Remus’ face, he whipped back around to watch their heading, but even from this angle Remus could see the edges of a grin several orders of magnitude more besotted than his own. Remus put his hand over his mouth to stifle a charmed laugh. Sirius’ heartfelt infatuation was far too contagious. He would be lucky if he kept this secret from Dora for a full afternoon. Not that Remus thought they should try. He had already resolved to make sure this “became important” as soon as possible.

“Do you want to try flying?” Sirius asked Dora, in what was—at least to Remus—a blatantly obvious ploy to divert her from the mystery. Fortunately, it was also an irresistible one. Dora leapt to her feet and devoured Sirius’ detailed explanation about the new controls he had added. Remus tried to follow along, so he could be familiar with the normal operation of the castle before he began to charm it, but that was difficult considering Dora’s wild beginner-pilot skills. Sirius was in no fit state to teach the kind of steady caution flying demanded. Instead of reigning her in, he whooped and egged her on giddily as she sent them spinning about the sky. Remus clung to the decking, grateful that he had refined the charms on their possessions so nothing inside would break. Finally Sirius called her off, sending her inside to open up Wizard Jenkins’ shop.

“Do I have to?” she whined, not liking to leave the exciting lesson behind.

“We’ve only got the Porthaven shop now, so Jenkins is going to have to work twice as hard. More, actually, since our days of selling palace goods on the black market are probably nearing their end,” Sirius said with airy practicality. “Go on. I’ll drop anchor and join you if things get too busy.”

She sighed with a level of expressiveness only a newly-formed teenager could manage, but she did go inside.

“All right then.” As he stood up, Remus braced himself against creaking joints before he remembered there weren’t any. He sighed in appreciation and spent a moment just standing on his feet, just breathing. The gentle rocking of the castle seemed to draw the last of the tension out thought his bare soles. When he opened his eyes, Sirius was watching him curiously over his shoulder. “Let me try flying. I can’t charm it yet, maybe tomorrow, but you can show me how it works.”

Remus was familiar with the steering wheel and the acceleration mechanism already, and he had no trouble understanding the lever that controlled their altitude by pointing the nose of the castle up or down. It took him a bit longer to accept the last addition, which functioned to roll the castle left or right, but eventually he saw that it was necessary for the castle to bank gently as it turned instead of simply spinning in a horizontal plane.

Sirius made piloting look as easy as his animagus transformation. Remus couldn’t help but admire the seemingly effortless confidence in his hands as he demonstrated the controls, guiding the ship though gentle turns and changes in altitude as gracefully as if he were captaining a cloud instead of a mismatched building with wings tacked on. This dexterity turned out to be difficult to emulate, as Remus discovered when Sirius relinquished the controls and let him try. No sooner had he put his hand on the long lever that controlled their angle than the castle jerked, rolling to the side alarmingly. Remus heard Dora and several customers calling out in protest from inside. Before he could yank the lever back the other way—probably with far too much force, sending them all tumbling into the sea—Sirius was there.

“Easy, easy.” Sirius grasped the lever a hands-width below him, bringing them back level with skillful precision. “I ought to increase the resistance,” he mused. “Dora had trouble too.”

Remus was in full support of that idea, but he was too busy shaking off the shock of their near-crash to reply. He was also intensely aware of how close they now were. Sirius had stepped in behind him to correct the mistake, and his arm hovered around Remus’ shoulder, parallel to his own. They weren’t quite touching, but the proximity was enough to make that whole side of Remus’ body sing with energy.

He examined Sirius’ hand contemplatively. Like the rest of him, it was well manicured. Every nail was perfectly curved, with a slight sheen to it that was probably not natural. Sirius wore two silver rings with tiny stones, similar to the one Remus had taken from Dora. Remus had always thought they were merely decorative before, but now he wondered if they, too, had a purpose.

Slowly, Remus slid his hand down the lever and curled his fingers around Sirius’ own. Sirius twitched from the contact but soon settled, abruptly abandoning an explanation about air currents that Remus hadn’t been listening to. Remus wasn’t close enough to hear the rings’ magic, but he didn’t care. He was far more interested in listening to the rise of his own pulse and the uneven hitch of Sirius’ breath. If Remus had been one of the women Sirius had romanced in the shop, he would already have had Remus in his arms—and quite possibly on his back—by now. Instead, for the last few days Sirius had been all shy smiles and quiet patience, even when Remus had been obstinately opposed to his assistance. He would take this new Sirius over the old one any day.

They were standing so close that when Remus breathed in, the expansion brought them just barely into contact. Instead of retreating on his exhalation, he stayed there, with the fabric of his shirt just brushing against Sirius’ coat. Sirius didn’t move away. Breath by breath, they drifted closer together, until he was pressed securely against Sirius’ body and Sirius’ free hand floated up to touch his hip. Remus turned his head and placed his ear against Sirius’ chest, purposefully focusing his attention so that instead of hearing his own spells, he heard nothing but the steady rhythms of lungs and heart, which wove together more pleasingly than any spell, as the gentle rolling flight of the castle carried them east over the wide ocean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter marks the end of the original story, which I first experienced as a dream, complete from beginning to end, including soundtrack. It took me three years to write down the dream I experienced in just a few minutes. I'm so glad I was able to share it with you all. About 80% of the story you have read so far is exactly as it was in that dream, which ended with this visceral feeling of being securely held and listening to the rhythms of life as I began a long journey home. 
> 
> Fortunately for those of you who, like me, would tear their hair out at such a G-rated ending, I added an epilogue. The following chapter is explicit, but is also available in a PG13/T version that nevertheless covers all the important character-related points and ties up a few loose plot strings. Please leave a comment or contact me if you need the PG13/T version. 
> 
> Enjoy!


	11. Epilogue, In Which There Is a Meaningful Event and Also Pancakes

**Epilogue**

**In Which There Is a Meaningful Event and Also Pancakes**

That evening Remus was lying in his bunk under the stairs with one of Dora’s adventure novels—one of the few books in the castle he had not yet read—when a shaggy black head pushed up the curtain and gazed at him pleadingly.

“Come on then,” Remus said with a smile. He scooted over and waited tolerantly as Padfoot stepped on him several times in the process of claiming more than his fair share of space. Once he had settled, Padfoot whooshed a sigh and drowsed contentedly while Remus continued to read. Remus spared a hand from his book to stroke him occasionally, as much for his own pleasure as for Padfoot’s. The dog’s ears were luxuriously soft.

Eventually Remus reached a stopping point and put the book up on a rafter above his head. He reached over to turn out the lamp that was sitting on the little shelf built into the bunk but then reconsidered.

“You know,” he said conversationally. “You don’t have to be a dog to share my bed. In fact, I would prefer it the other way around.”

Padfoot blinked sleepily at him and wiggled around on the bunk, growing as he did so, in the now-familiar transformation from dog back to man. Remus had seen it many times, but he had never felt it before. It was a strange, tickling sensation, and he couldn’t help laughing, especially as Sirius continued to expand, shoulders widening and legs lengthening until he nearly had to curl himself up to fit. Remus, who was already on his side, found himself pressed snugly against the wall with Sirius’ shoulder digging into his sternum.

“What’s so funny?” Sirius demanded, shaking the last of the dogness off with a toss of his head.

“You!” Remus vibrated between Sirius and the wall with laughter. “I forgot how gigantic you are. I’m surprised you don’t fall off!”

“I’m not _gigantic_ ,” Sirius said with dignity. “A bit tall, maybe. This is just a small bed.” He shuffled over enough to give Remus room to breathe. Sirius didn’t seem to mind the close quarters himself. He was smiling, and there was a pink tinge to his cheeks that Remus was getting used to seeing there.

“Hey, Remus,” he said, once Remus had nearly managed to contain his laughter. He reached for Remus’ hand where it was dangling over his hip and twined their fingers together. “I’m glad you decided to stay.”

Remus smiled down at him. “Me too.”

He would have wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes then, but he didn’t want to let go of Sirius’ hand, so he leaned down and kissed him instead. Sirius startled as if he had been shocked, but before Remus could begin to regret the suddenness of the gesture, Sirius responded with all the skill of experience and the eagerness of a first kiss combined.

After observing Sirius’ newfound shyness, Remus had wondered if his recent change of heart—so to speak—had left him timid. That theory was quickly disproven when Sirius pulled Remus’ hand over to his waist, right where his shirt tucked into his trousers, placing it there with an inviting little press of his fingers. Then Sirius pulled Remus’ leg over his own, drawing him closer against his hip, all the while kissing him so intently that Remus’ head spun. Shyness would definitely not be a problem.

Remus tugged on Sirius’ shirt for a moment, considering whether he should do the proper thing and draw this out, letting his hands explore Sirius’ body through the fabric instead of undressing him immediately. He _could_ have done that. He didn’t. He had had far too many relationships come to abrupt ends before he had a chance to fully enjoy them. He was not inclined to go slowly or take anything for granted. So he jerked the shirt free and slid his hand over warm skin, compromising only by moving his hand upwards instead of down under the still-buttoned trousers.

Sirius broke the kiss to gasp for air, and Remus struggled not to laugh as his fingers slid over the completely smooth skin of Sirius’ chest and stomach. Of course Sirius wouldn’t have hair there. Remus should have known there wouldn’t be a single hair anywhere on Sirius’ body that was not specifically chosen to stay. He probably used a potion to remove it. He did sell them in the shop. Remus skimmed his lips and tongue over Sirius’ jaw, which was also smooth and free of stubble. He must have snuck up to the bathroom to preen or there would be some end-of-day growth. Such vanity. Remus couldn’t hide his laughter this time, although he managed to keep it to a short burst.

“What?” Sirius panted.

“Nothing.” Remus, still smiling, distracted him with teeth on his earlobe. He slipped his other hand into Sirius’ hair, which was nearly as soft as Padfoot’s ears. Sirius groaned and pulled Remus into perfect alignment astride him with a firm grip on his hips. He let Remus rest atop him as the pads of his fingers eased under Remus’ loose pajama shirt, over his lower back, and around to his sides. Remus pushed himself up enough to kiss him, trying go slow, to tease, but failing. They had only just started, and already he was dying to have Sirius under him just like this, but without the frustrating barriers of clothing.

Sirius hardly seemed less desperate. Remus gasped into the kiss as Sirius moved their hips in a long, slow slide that shook through his whole body like an earthquake. Remus had to give up on touching Sirius’ chest as he suddenly required both arms just to prop himself up. He was already too overcome to even kiss him properly. When Sirius moved their hips again, Remus abruptly abandoned any more complex plans he might have had for the evening in favor of simply moving in that rhythm—

Or that was how it _would_ have been, if his knee had not chosen that moment to slide off the narrow mattress. It knocked painfully against the frame below with a loud thunk and threw him off balance. He might have fallen out of the bunk completely, but Sirius quickly slid his hand down to support his knee from below, preventing further catastrophe.

“I told you,” Remus panted, clarity returning as their hips stilled out of necessity. “You don’t fit.” That was perhaps a bit unfair, seeing as it was Remus that had nearly fallen off, not Sirius, but Sirius didn’t seem to care.

“We could go upstairs,” he whispered headily into Remus’ ear.

Remus had hardly finished nodding his head to say yes when he felt himself scooped up from beneath as Sirius maneuvered them out of the bunk. He yelped slightly, finding himself suddenly high up in the air. Sirius was holding him securely, but Remus wrapped his legs around his hips and hung on anyways.

“You could give me a little warning,” he scolded. “What is it with you and picking me up? I _can_ walk, you know.”

“But this is far more fun.” Sirius flexed his fingers with a grin. “Besides, you’re ridiculously light. Must be a werewolf thing.”

At the sound of that word, Remus startled in Sirius arms so much that he nearly fell. He was absolutely not used to the idea of Sirius _knowing._ He tried to cover up his reaction by laughing, not wanting to ruin the moment with his insecurities. “Yeah...well don’t get too used to it, because I’m still planning to find a way to remove the curse.”

He did his best, but both the laugh and his comment came out hollow. He wasn’t very convincing at all. Sirius’ face fell, and Remus’ heart sank along with it. Sirius’ steps slowed and then stopped on the landing of the stairs.

“Remus...I know I wasn’t particularly subtle earlier. About how I feel.” Sirius kept his eyes downcast, as if that could stop Remus from seeing that exact feeling, new but clearly quite strong, on display there. “I want you to know, I _am_ going to try to help you find a cure. I have no idea if it’s possible, but I will help you try. No matter what.” He swallowed. “I don’t want you to think you are...obligated to do this.”

Remus shook his head rapidly. “No, I know. I don’t, really.” That was not exactly true. He felt a lot of obligation already. Sirius and Dora had both done so much, and truthfully he wasn’t comfortable with this whole situation yet. But he also knew, just as surely, that no sense of obligation was needed to make him want to have sex with Sirius. He had wanted _that_ for weeks.

“Then why...” Sirius started to say, but then appeared to change his mind.

“I should think that was obvious,” Remus said, with a demonstrative shift of his hips.

This was apparently the wrong answer. Sirius drooped visibly, disappointment saturating every muscle in his body. “Oh,” he said, very quietly.

Remus sighed and unhooked his legs, letting himself slide out of Sirius’ arms. If scolding Sirius was like kicking a puppy, disappointing him was like leaving that puppy all alone in a dark room. It was impossible not to feel guilty, but Remus was determined not to let guilt make him do something stupid like tell Sirius he was in love with him, which was obviously what Sirius had been hoping for. Puppies didn’t always get what they wanted either.

He didn’t think Sirius was _trying_ to be manipulative. It seemed, rather, that he was just really terrible at tempering the new extremes of emotion he was now capable of experiencing.

Remus’ feet landed on the first stair above the landing, and he was grateful to be on slightly more even ground. He kept his arms wrapped around Sirius’ neck. He wanted to stay close, but there was no way he would be able to have a rational conversation about this if he was wrapped around Sirius like an octopus.

“I can tell that’s not what you wanted to hear,” he said gently. “But I’ve barely known you a month—”

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” Sirius interrupted. He covered his face with his hands. His skin showed bright red through his fingers. “It’s fine.”

“No, listen. Every relationship I’ve been in that lasted more than a couple days has ended badly.” He winced at the understatement. “Extremely, unusually badly. I don’t have it in me anymore to trust someone after such a short period of time. It is just not possible.” He ran his fingers through Sirius’ hair. “If this doesn’t feel like enough, then we can wait. We don’t have to rush.”

Sirius uncovered his face with a sigh and put his arms back around Remus’ waist. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to pressure you. I guess...” he grimaced. “I’m just tired of having meaningless sex.”

Remus’ mouth fell open, and he was momentarily speechless. Without even meaning to, his hands slid though Sirius’ hair and wrapped around the back of his head, pulling him forward and down until their faces were pressed close together. He sucked in a breath and managed to say, “Sirius, whether it’s now or a long time from now, having sex with you would _never_ be meaningless.”

Sirius breathed against his cheek for a moment, then he nodded. “All right then.”

He turned his head to envelope Remus in a kiss that was so sweet and so sincere that Remus’ knees instantly went weak. After a few moments he was nearly hanging from Sirius’ shoulders, which was a bit of a problem because Sirius didn’t seem too steady on his feet either. “Come on,” Sirius whispered, and led him upstairs.

They tiptoed past Dora’s room, although she was surely deep asleep by now. Sirius turned the lock behind him, grinning like sneaking Remus into his room was a fantastic prank he had just pulled off, as if he was the teenager and Dora the adult, instead of the other way around. Remus pulled him in close and reached up to kiss him. Sirius responded eagerly, and it took him only moments to pull off Remus’ shirt. So much for not being in a rush.

Remus braced against the sudden exposure, preparing himself for the inevitable questions. No one ever got this far without commenting on his scars. They were fewer than they could have been, but the wolf has still left its mark in the form of raised lines and chunks of missing flesh. He had a cover story for each one ready on the tip of his tongue, so he was a bit shaken when Sirius didn’t even blink. He just wrapped his arms back around him and began trailing his hands over Remus’ sides enticingly, keeping his tongue occupied in another way entirely. But...of course Sirius wouldn’t be surprised. He had already seen it all yesterday, and he would surely have guessed what the scars were from. Remus would never need to lie at all—in fact, if he wanted to, he might even be able to tell Sirius the _true_ stories of how he had come by the various marks. He shivered under that realization and the teasing pull of Sirius’ fingers both. No, there was nothing about this experience that was meaningless. If anything it was the other way around. He was already struggling not to give everything that was happening far more meaning than any first encounter should have. No one could doubt Sirius’ devotion tonight, but it was always best to prepare for disappointment.

It was so hard, though, to keep himself in that mindset when his body was screaming that this is what it had wanted all along, and his heart was singing a song about Sirius being the best thing that had ever happened to him. And both parts of him wanted so much more.

So he went willingly, even when Sirius pushed him down onto the bed, unintentionally pinning him with his bulk in a way that Remus would usually have found stifling. Even with Sirius’ broad shoulders hovering above and his hair falling down around them, there was so much warmth and excitement radiating off him, it was more like being drenched in sunlight than cast in shadow. And hadn’t it been like that since he had come here? Hadn’t he always thrived here, when he hadn’t expected to anywhere?

Remus yanked off Sirius’ shirt and then pulled him back down to press his lips to the soft skin of Sirius’ neck. Sirius groaned prettily and canted their hips together. Remus sucked with a visceral hunger that had nothing to do with the wolf, not even caring who might see the mark later. He was through with keeping secrets.

He hastily undid Sirius’ trousers and pushed them out of the way so he could run his fingers along the underside of Sirius’ cock, which he could not quite see with them pressed so close together.

“What do you want to do?” Sirius twitched his hips against Remus’ hand, begging for more contact. “Whatever you want, we can do that.”

“Fuck me then,” Remus said, surprising himself a little. He wrapped his hand around Sirius’ cock more completely—or tried to—and realized it would be wise to amend his statement. Sirius’ cock wasn’t outsized, but he was a large person, and at least this part of him was very...proportional. “With your fingers first. One, then two, then three. _Then_ you can fuck me. Slowly...until I tell you.”

“Yeah?” Sirius had pulled up to watch him talk, with breath coming fast and eyes heavy-lidded. There was also a smile twitching at the corner of his lips, as if he found part of these directions funny. “And then?”

“Then...” Remus pulled teasingly, smiling when Sirius bit his lip and closed his eyes in pleasure. “You can fuck me as hard and fast as you want.”

Sirius sank back down and kissed the side of Remus’ neck. “We should do—exactly that.”

Remus looked around the bedroom, which was cluttered but now mostly devoid of the hanging forest of misdirection devices he had seen the day after the full moon. Sirius had left up a few of the more artistic ones, and Remus could still hear a bit of their harp-like magic. It wasn’t an unpleasant sound. “Do you have any...”

“Yeah.” Sirius leaned across the bed towards the end table, but before he got there he groaned and flopped down onto his stomach. “No…it’s all gone. There’s some in stock downstairs.” He glanced over uncertainly, as if he was worried Remus might disappear if he left the room.

“I’ll get it,” Remus said. He pushed Sirius’ lower body off of him, pausing for a moment to savor the sight of him sprawled on the bed with his trousers pushed halfway down to his knees. Sirius had preserved a decorative line of hair on his lower stomach, and of course it preformed exactly the eye-drawing function it was supposed to. “I’m slightly more dressed than you.”

He dashed downstairs and found the relevant bottles on a discreet upper shelf. He had his own lubricant in his pack, of course, but Sirius’ was probably better. That theory was supported by the tactfully euphemistic yet still grandiose claims on the label.

“Big talk for a little bottle,” he said as he closed the bedroom door behind himself.

“It’s not just talk. Come here, and I’ll show you.” Sirius had undressed the rest of the way in Remus’ brief absence, and he had turned down the bed so they could be between the sheets. There was also a convenient pile of handkerchiefs on one side.

“Just a minute.” Remus turned away from this appealing sight to eye the door and surrounding walls. “Here now, door. You won’t be letting any sounds out of this room, will you? There’s going to be things going on that no one else needs to hear, so do your part. Tell your friends, the walls, too. Got it?”

“Good idea,” Sirius said, and Remus rejoined him on the bed. Moments later his own clothing was gone, and Sirius had pulled him back underneath him. Their bare skin slid together gloriously, and Remus found himself panting and spreading his legs and pushing the little bottle into Sirius’ hands. Sirius moved down his chest with tongue and hands and teeth, tracing glowing patterns that meandered and crossed each other like trailing vines until he found their root and began lapping at the head of Remus’ cock as one slick finger pushed inside. Remus pressed his hand against his mouth to hide his sudden, overwhelmed sounds, but Sirius tugged on his elbow, reminding him that there was no need to be quiet. Remus slid his fingers into Sirius’ hair instead, pulling slightly when Sirius leaned against his hand.

“More, then, do two,” he said breathlessly, and then groaned again at the added pressure. It had been months since he had had sex and much longer than that since he had let someone do this. It was always safer, with strangers, to be the one doing the fucking.

Sirius waited for his direction before he added a third finger, and then gradually increased the pace until Remus was gasping from the speed. Meanwhile, Sirius was sliding his lips over the head of Remus’ cock again and again, not sucking much but just mouthing and rubbing with his tongue until Remus began to worry he would come. Then Sirius would back off, giving him barely enough time to slide down off the edge before starting again. It was maddening. After a few repetitions of this, Remus was ready to throw all his ideas about long, preparatory foreplay out the window, no matter how big Sirius was.

“You should—fuck me now,” he said, pulling Sirius’ head away as he felt the orgasm building in him yet again. It was almost not enough, with Sirius’ long fingers flying in and out of him and pushing on all the right places on the way.

“Not yet.” Sirius smiled and moved up his body to kiss him with warm, salty lips. Remus planted his feet on the bed and ground up onto his hand. Sirius took over his mouth, swallowing his cries as he added a fourth finger. He had to move more shallowly then, but his speed did not decrease. Remus moaned and arched backwards, and Sirius’ mouth moved down to suck on his neck.

When Remus turned his head he could see Sirius’ cock, now so erect that the tip was peeking out, shining wet and red in a sheath of slightly paler skin. Sirius was rubbing against the sheets, leaving damp trails behind, but when Remus tried to reach for him, he shifted out of range. Remus gripped Sirius’ arm in dizzy frustration. Sirius was only a technical detail away from fisting him now, and he didn’t know how much longer he could hold back, even without being touched anywhere else. It was just too good.

“Do it,” he ordered, once he mustered the breath. When Sirius didn’t immediately move to comply, he elaborated, “Now!”

“Hmmm, are you sure?” Sirius asked, his voice an unpardonable, seductive purr. “I think you should ask me more nicely than that.”

“Oh, fuck you!” Remus gasped, outraged. Sirius wanted him to _beg?_ He would never be that desperate. He cursed him instead, in a long steady stream of profanity, making use of other languages when necessary, because it wasn’t like Sirius was even listening. If anything, he was slowing down. Remus dug his fingers into Sirius’ arm nearly hard enough to break the skin, but he didn’t care. If Sirius wanted sweet, romantic sex then he would have to learn not to be such an “evil, fucking sadistic, overconfident, vain—ah!—spoiled fucking peacock... _it’s not funny!_ ”

Sirius was laughing so hard that he had mostly stopped moving, which was not in alignment with Remus’ goals at all. His head dropped down onto Remus’ chest, and the muscles in his back shivered as he spasmed with laughter.

“What’s funny is you,” he wheezed, “complaining just because I’m doing what you asked for. This is what you get for giving me step by step instructions—as if I’ve never done it before!”

“It was just a precaution,” Remus growled. And we was fairly sure he had said _three_ fingers, not four, but he didn’t have the composure to point this out.

“You don’t have to be cautious with me.” Sirius’ voice was low and intense, and his teeth scraped Remus’ earlobe. He punctuated this with a final series of divine plunges of his fingers that left Remus nearly arching off the bed entirely. Then, finally, finally, he pulled his hand away and nudged Remus to turn over. 

Remus had never rolled over so fast in his life. He would have liked to stay the way he was so he could watch Sirius’ face, but he was already shaking and horrifically desperate. He wasn’t about to argue any more.

Sirius was apparently still not inclined to go quickly, but Remus was no longer helpless. As soon as they were lined up properly, he pushed himself back, overriding—in a very literal sense—Sirius’ tiny, teasing, thrusts. He used first the headboard and then his own body weight as leverage until he was sitting in Sirius’ lap, exquisitely impaled. He hardly even felt the stretch. Sirius’ work had paid off, and the lubricant was already exceeding Remus’ expectations. Not that he would tell Sirius that. The last thing Sirius’ oversized ego needed was more praise.

Sirius was gasping against his shoulder. His hands skated, trembling, across Remus’ chest and one snuck up to bury itself in his hair. Remus twisted around to kiss him, relishing stealing even more of his breath away, but his own hips were already twitching. He didn’t want time to adjust. He wanted to do this _now._

He lifted himself up and let gravity take him back down a couple times, but it was hard to get the pace he craved. No lubricant was powerful enough to make it easy, not from this position. Sirius wrapped both hands around his hips and helped, thrusting slowly but with such intensity that Remus had to lean forward to grip the headboard for balance. Sirius was still taking his time, but not, Remus guessed, purely to tease. Not any more. He thought, rather, that Sirius just didn’t want this to end. Remus agreed with that sentiment, but he also wanted much more, and he egged Sirius on shamelessly with both voice and body.

Bit by bit, Sirius obeyed, until, finally, he was pounding forward so fast and rough that Remus gave up any hope of holding himself up on the headboard. He fell down onto his elbows with his head hanging.

“Oh fuck,” he panted into the sheets, “ _yes,_ just like that—” Sirius was too big not to rub on his prostate with each thrust, and from this angle Remus was not only seeing stars, he was nearly becoming them. Little fizzles of light sparked and exploded inside him again and again, until he was so close he couldn’t stand it any more. He reached down to touch himself, but Sirius’ hand shot out to cover his, pinning it to the bed. Remus could have tried with his other hand, but the message was clear: wait. Their fingers tangled together, and Remus tugged the hand up to his lips to kiss it, open-mouthed and messy.

“Oh, gods, Remus,” Sirius groaned behind him, and he wished again that they were facing each other, so he could watch Sirius coming apart at the seams. Although he barely had the presence of mind to keep his eyes open. He had nearly forgotten how _good_ this could be, or possibly it never actually had been this good before. Remus crumbled a little more with each thrust, but whatever was crumbling away was only a shell for the strong, resilient thing unfolding at his core, right where he needed it most.

Then suddenly Sirius’ hand was twisting wildly in his grip. He was trying to let go, and Remus realized with a dizzy gasp of relief that Sirius was about to come. Rather than releasing Sirius’ fingers, Remus reached under himself with his other hand. Even with his nondominant hand, it took only a couple clumsy touches. All this energy, all this growth, had been confined inside him for far too long. His orgasm came with sharp suddenness, less a slow blooming and more the lightning-fast reverberation of a thousand flowers simultaneously snapping open into brilliant color. Remus’ scream came out muffled against their twined fingers as his cock pulsed madly beneath him.

Sirius whimpered, gripping Remus tightly at his hand and hip. He was bowed over, hair brushing Remus’ back and hot breath glowing against his skin as he cried out and came in twitching bursts. Remus pushed back and clenched around him, moaning, out of control, already wanting to do this again, preferably all night long.

Afterwards, Remus wilted down flat onto the bed, and the world seemed to spin behind his closed eyes. Sirius collapsed next to him, finally managing to pull his hand out of Remus’ now-limp grasp, although it didn’t go far. He seemed to give up after a few inches, and his palm rested stickily on Remus’ back. Remus was fully occupied with gasping for breath. He felt the weight of Sirius’ hand with each inhalation. Slowly, his body remembered what it meant to be calm.

“All right?” Sirius spoke in the purposely casual voice of someone who was terrified everything would fall apart now that the sex was over.

With great effort, Remus uprooted himself from the bed enough to turn his head the other way so they were facing each other again. “You can do _that_ ,” he mumbled, still dreamy, “whenever you want.”

Sirius exploded with a short, relieved burst of laughter. “Just like that, every time, huh?”

“Oh no, variety is good. I’m just saying, whenever you do want to do that, it’s fine.”

Sirius moved closer, pressing himself against Remus’ side with his leg curling over his hips and his lips against his cheek. Remus kissed him back, soaking in the hazy postorgasmic bliss of each offered moment.

“You don’t have to go back downstairs, in case that wasn’t clear.” Sirius murmured. “You can sleep here.”

“You’d _better_ let me sleep here,” Remus said, just for the pleasure of feeling Sirius chuckle against him.

They settled in like that, and stayed that way long enough that Remus nearly drifted off, but then Sirius said, “I had a dream about you.”

“That was fast.”

“No, I mean a long time ago. When my mother...when she did this.” Sirius rolled away onto his back and put his hand on his chest, over his heart. “She had to put me to sleep. And I dreamed I was lying there, watching what she was doing, and you were there, standing over me. I had wanted her to do it until then, I was relieved, even, but you looked so upset.” He was looking fixedly towards the ceiling to his right, like he was in the dream right now. It was a bit alarming. Remus raised himself up on one elbow to listen.

“You were horrified. You grabbed my shoulder and said ‘You can’t live like this!’ I couldn’t say anything. You watched her take it away, and you said, ‘You have to put it back.’ You were _crying._ I was so confused, so scared. She had said it was safe, but as soon as I woke up I knew you were right. I was like half a person. I begged her to undo it—but she, she wouldn’t—”

He was babbling by the end, eyes wide with panic. He clapped his hand over his mouth and turned away, shoulders shaking with sudden, violent sobs.

“Sounds more like a nightmare than a dream to me.” Remus draped himself over his shoulders, squeezing, worried Sirius had lost sight of the present in the grip of the memory.

“Gods, I’m so sorry,” Sirius choked out, nervously half-laughing between sobs. “I always thought, at least I’ll never be that person that cries after sex...”

“You couldn’t cry before, could you?” Sirius nodded, and Remus handed him one of the clean handkerchiefs he had gotten out earlier. “Then you’d better now. You’ve got catching up to do.”

“I guess. I’d almost rather not,” Sirius said. He sat up shakily. His breathing had slowed somewhat, but his tears had not. “Almost. That’s how I got into this mess. I was so _stupid_.”

He still had one hand clutched protectively over his chest, as if he would go back in time and fight for himself, prevent everything. Remus covered that hand with his own. He wished it was possible. He wished there was more he could do, but he knew from experience that some things just had to be felt until they were over. That and to hear— “It wasn’t your fault. I saw what she was like.”

Sirius had been dying right in front of her, and she hadn’t even tried to find out why. Remus was disturbed not just by her lack of concern, but also by her lack of _curiosity_. If he had been in her shoes, he would have wanted to know what was going on, even if Sirius had been a stranger instead of a son—even if he had been a lifelong enemy! But all the Regent had seen was that Sirius’ pain was convenient for her in that moment, because she could use it to manipulate Dora. There was a certain tunnel vision to that, a lack of imagination, that was positively creepy.

Sirius didn’t say anything else, but he pulled Remus into his arms and down onto the bed, holding him with an intensity of raw need that could only come from being raised by such a person. Sirius and Dora were both a bit damaged in that way, but Remus didn’t mind. It was a miracle they had survived to become as whole as they were. Besides, he knew something about being torn apart.

“Is that why you let me stay?” he asked, once Sirius had calmed down and loosened his grip a little. “Because you saw me in a vision?”

Sirius shook his head. “Not really. I wasn’t sure it _was_ you when you first showed up. You were a lot younger in the dream. I guess it was how you looked back then, twelve years ago. And your hair was different. It was braided.”

“Then it was before I left Lonuma’ugo.” Remus reached up to touch his cloudy curls self-consciously. “I haven’t had anyone to braid it since.”

“Really? I could help if you want. I’ve done Dora’s a bit.”

“No, it’s—it’s something your family does.” He could have done it himself, after all. He wouldn’t have been able to braid it in elegant geometric patterns and protective runes like his mother had, but he could have managed simple lines or spirals. He had never tried. It would have been a lie. He didn’t have a family any more.

The silence began to stretch on between them, but Remus heard the words Sirius was preventing himself from speaking. He read them clearly in the warm tightness of Sirius’ arms, in the way he pressed his cheek to his hair. Sirius loved him. He wanted to be Remus’ family.

It was _insane_. They hardly knew each other. It was dangerous. Thinking about letting someone in like that was like looking over the edge of a cliff and thinking about jumping. Or perhaps it was more like preparing to dive into a lake of deep water, because it wasn’t certain death waiting for him, just the unknown. It could be a disaster...or it could be something really lovely.

“The truth is,” he whispered into Sirius’ chest, “I care about you so much it terrifies me.”

Sirius scooted down the bed until they were face to face. “You don’t have to be afraid. I would never hurt you.”

Everyone said that kind of thing in the beginning of a relationship. In reality people hurt each other all the time, especially once infatuation wore off, but Remus had every intention of enjoying this beginning for as long as it lasted. Besides, Sirius was as sincerely adoring and as confident as the dog he sometimes was. It was impossible to doubt him to his face, so Remus just smiled and ran his hand up Sirius’ ostentatiously hairless chest.

“And if you ever want to,” Sirius continued, “you can tell me about whoever hurt you and made you so afraid.”

“Maybe I will,” Remus said. He pulled a pillow under his head and got one for Sirius too. “But not tonight. What about Dora, are you really not going to tell her? I think we’ve broken the rules.”

“The rules were made about pointless one-night stands, not about...” Sirius hesitated, obviously unwilling to give Remus a title he had not yet volunteered for. “Well, not about you. I’ll talk to her tomorrow. It’ll probably be all right.”

Remus hid a clench of uneasiness behind closed eyes. Sirius wasn’t saying it outright, but it seemed clear that in this, as in all things, Dora’s approval would be necessary. And if she didn’t approve...that would be the end of it.

He couldn’t make himself worry about this as thoroughly as he should have, though, not with Sirius wrapped warmly around him and blissful lethargy still weighing him down. That was a problem for tomorrow.

+++

He slept in late the next morning, late enough that he ran into a just-awakened Dora when he emerged from the bathroom.

“Where’s Padfoot?” she asked sleepily. “He didn’t sleep with me last night, and I can’t find him anywhere.”

“Um.” Remus shifted in place guiltily. “Maybe he’s in there.” He pointed towards the bedroom where he had left Sirius sleeping.

“Huh.” Dora tried the doorknob, but Remus had made a point of locking it behind him, since Sirius had definitely not been decently clothed when he left. “He sleeps as a human now sometimes. I saw him do it yesterday. It’s weird.”

“So...pancakes?” Remus was not above distracting her with her favorite breakfast, not at all. Sure enough, she brightened and followed him downstairs. He had just begun mixing up three bowls of batter—one with chocolate for himself, one with blueberries for Sirius, and one with chocolate _and_ blueberries for Dora—when Sirius came pounding down the stairs. He was dressed but not yet shaved or made up. He looked around the room wildly, then stopped in mid-step when he saw Remus at the stove.

“Oh, good,” Sirius said. He smiled with relief. “I was worried you’d left again.”

“Just making breakfast,” Remus said, with a significant glance at Dora, who was clearing off the workbench.

“Right. Be right back.” Sirius retreated up the stairs and into the bathroom. 

Dora watched him go, frowning. Remus busied himself with lighting the stove and heating up the pan until Sirius returned, much sooner than expected. He must have sped through his morning routine, but you wouldn’t know it to look at him.

“That smells great,” he said, hovering over the stove, where the first set of pancakes was beginning to brown. Meanwhile, Dora was frowning more suspiciously than ever. Remus watched her out of the corner of his eye as he flipped the pancakes, and he saw the exact moment when realization dawned.

“It’s Remus, isn’t it! That’s who you’re in love with!”

Sirius eyes widened. He was obviously not quite ready for this moment, but he turned around to face her anyways. Remus’ own stomach flipped in a less-pleasant mimicry of the pancakes. Sirius fidgeted and ran his hand though his hair before admitting, “Yes.”

“Does that mean you’re going to be kissing and stuff?” she asked, with a slight shudder.

“Not around you, n-not if it bothers you.” Sirius tactfully refrained from mentioning all of the “kissing and stuff” that had already taken place.

She put her hands on her hips. “It does!”

“We won’t then, I promise,” Sirius said fervently. Remus nodded his head in agreement, but Dora wasn’t watching him. Her eyes were fixed on Sirius. Her scowl had faded somewhat, but the expression that followed it had a foreboding note of sadness. Remus felt his heart sinking, and he was so distracted that the pancakes probably would have burned if he had not already lectured this pan about burning food the other day. He quickly transferred them to a plate and poured in the next batch with shaking hands.

The silence dragged on. Sirius fidgeted more, the pancakes began to bubble, and Dora continued to stare. Finally Sirius caved and burst out, “Please, talk to me. I—I do want to know what you think. If you don’t like it...”

He trailed off at the end. Remus couldn’t see his face. He turned the pancakes over mechanically. Obviously, she didn’t like it. That was it then. He would have to leave. Preferably out the Porthaven entrance, and not out into the middle of the ocean, but who knew? It would depend on what Dora wanted. She always got what she wanted.

“I was just thinking,” Dora said slowly. “I don’t remember my parents very much, but you’re really not very much like them, are you?”

Sirius was standing less than an arm’s length away from the stove. Remus heard him swallow. “I-I guess not.”

“But...” Dora stopped and picked at the carved wood on the back of the couch. “We’re, like, a family, right? Not him.” She glanced at Remus for the briefest of moments and then fixed her eyes on the flaking wood finish. “You and me.”

“Yes!” Sirius seemed to be on solid ground now. “And that won’t change. Not ever.”

Dora nodded, biting her lip. “Yeah, but…” she sighed. “I know I look older than I am.”

Remus frowned, perplexed by the sudden change of subject. It was true that Dora looked a bit more mature than her thirteen years. It had been a choice, obviously, but he had never paid it much attention. It was hardly an unusual thing for a girl her age to wish to be a bit more grown up.

Sirius didn’t seem to know what to say to this either, and after a moment she continued. “We’re going to go to a bunch of new places. No one knows who we are, so I can be myself instead of Jenkins. But people might see us and, you know, think I’m your girlfriend or something. That would be weird, right?” 

“Definitely. Very weird,” Sirius agreed. He was twice her age, but you wouldn’t know that to look at them.

Her voice became very small and fragile, just barely audible. “So maybe, so people don’t get confused…maybe you should be my dad instead.”

Remus heard Sirius inhale unsteadily with surprise. “Is that—is that what you want?”

Dora nodded hesitantly, still staring at the couch.

“That sounds... _awesome._ ” Sirius’ voice was wide with both excitement and relief.

“Really?” Remus only saw her shaky half-smile for an instant before she was engulfed in Sirius arms. “Oof!”

“I love you, little lemon.” Sirius gripped her tightly. “I’ve _always_ loved you.”

“That’s good then,” she mumbled and pushed him self-consciously away. Her cheeks were as pink as her hair, but she was smiling. 

Remus’ own eyes stung with the shock of relief when he had honestly expected disaster. The smell of burning sugar pulled him back into himself, and he hastily wiped his eyes and slid the last of the pancakes onto a plate. He hadn’t even been aware of finishing Sirius’ pancakes and starting on Dora’s, but apparently he had done it. The movement caught her eye, and when Remus gestured to the three plates they both came over to investigate.

“Thanks for not kicking me out,” he said in a hesitant aside to Dora as she took her plate.

“I wouldn’t do that!” she said. “I’m just glad you’re not one of those weepy women or worse—James.” She shuddered.

Remus laughed uncertainly, mystified that he, the only one of those choices with a deadly monster dogging his footsteps, was somehow preferable. Her tolerance was even more of a miracle than Sirius’. He didn’t understand it, but that didn’t mean he was going to turn it down, for as long as it lasted.

“These are so good, Remus.” Sirius sighed with delight once he had had a chance to dig into the food. “It’s going to be a wonderful day, I can tell already.”

“I should say so,” Remus said. “It’s not often somebody gets a boyfriend and a daughter in a single day.”

Sirius’ fork froze halfway to his mouth. “Boyfriend?”

Remus nodded. He might not be up for pledging undying love, but to call himself otherwise at this point would really be sticking his head in the sand.

Sirius smiled so buoyantly that his entire body seemed to rise an inch or two into the air. He was barely able to close his lips around the gigantic forkful of pancake when it meandered dreamily up to his mouth, which made Dora snort and roll her eyes.

“ _Fantastic_ day,” Sirius repeated.

Remus just smiled as Sirius stealthily squeezed his hand under the table and the familiar, homelike taste of chocolate filled his mouth. He couldn’t see everything that lay ahead of them, but he was inclined to agree.

THE END


End file.
